Ritu Sarin - The Panama Papers : The Untold India Story of the Trailblazing Gobal Offshore Investigation

The Panama Papersan unprecedented giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and legal records of global law firm Mossack Fonseca based in Panama Cityexposed crime, corruption and wrongdoing by the rich and powerful who stashed away wealth in secretive tax havens.

Besides digging through and making sense of an astounding 2600 GB of data, the Panama Papers investigation involved breaking new ground in its size and scope. Journalists from more than 100 news organizations around the world worked together over nine months on the project. Their solidarity and trust ensured that the investigation remained a global secret till D-Day.

Much has been written about how the biggest leak in the history of data journalism and the most ambitious media collaboration ever shook the world. An excellent book by two reporters of Germanys Sddeutsche Zeitung, Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, three years ago narrated how they landed and mounted this amazing story. The duo received the leaked data from an unnamed source and trusted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to put together a global investigation.

Collaborative journalism has come of age with the ICIJ which has since then continued to stitch together complex global investigations such as Paradise Papers and Implant Files, but there may never be another Panama Papers. The collaboration set new professional benchmarks and restored faith in journalism at a time when media credibility had sunk to a dismal low in many countries. In that context alone, the Indian subplot of the Panama Papers story is worth exploring.

As the only Indian media organization in the global collaboration, the Indian Express played a significant role in the investigation. More than 100 reports exposing a fascinating range of Indian (and prominent Pakistani) connections to the Panamanian law firm dominated domestic news for weeks. It was a major milestone for the organization that devoted three senior editors, nine months and considerable resources to be part of a journey that had never been attempted before.

Pursuing a secret project for months on end is tough for any journalist used to breaks and bylines in the daily news cycle. It is tough to sport a sheepish smile and say nothing when friends and colleagues wondermore in jest than in sympathyabout ones diminishing visibility in the newspaper. But these personal tribulations barely make for footnotes in the India chapter of the Panama Papers. It was the behind-the-scenes dramaan exhilarating corroboration, a global chat room perpetually buzzing with leads, nerve-racking periods of waiting, a chance discovery here, a red herring there, and a few moments of veiled intimidationthat made the journey remarkable.

The Panama Papers investigation is ultimately about the loot of public money and the need for tax reforms. Tax evasion is as ancient as taxation which still struggles to be just and effective. In an age of growing income inequality, the importance of public funding to fight poverty cannot be overstated. Also, the lack of public confidence in regulatory frameworks or political will often leads to perceptions of illegitimacy of wealth where there might be none. These concerns further strengthen the case for more efficient tax laws.

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This book breaks down the India story of the Panama Papers into thirteen chapters, followed by an Epilogue. It begins, conventionally, at the beginning when the project was offered to the Indian Express through long-time ICIJ member Ritu Sarin, and Jay Mazoomdaar and P. Vaidyanathan Iyer were roped in subsequently to form the three-member India team. The second chapter is a primer of sorts on the history of taxation and tax evasion. It sets the necessary context and the appropriate stage for understanding the role that firms such as Mossack Fonseca play, for appreciating the critical scope of the investigation and for identifying the stakes involved.

The third chapter takes off from the end of the first chapter. It talks of how our team of three reporters got a hang of the project work and of working with one another. Though part of the same newsroom for quite some time, we had never worked together before. It did not take us long to ease into a collaborative space along with scores of reporters spread all over the world but united in a custom-built online forum and an advanced digital search engine protected behind layers of firewalls. This chapter also tells the story of Mossack Fonseca, before the investigation moves on to those rare insights hidden in its leaked records. The next chapter tries to capture the never-ending digging process through snatches of personal interactions: the insecurities and frustration in the early months, the occasional exhilaration at a discovery and the mostly tedious pursuit of details to join as many dots as possible.

The fifth chapter describes the exciting weeks when the team hit the road and went knocking on doors across the country to verify addresses and ascertain identities. They dodged officious security personnel at upscale gated communities, discovered an empty basement parking where an office should have been, even ran into hounds fiercely protecting their masters privacy. The next chapter is on a series of close shaves: the last-minute heads up from a colleague in the online forum on Aishwarya Rai, the mention of Ratan Tata that was not and an invitation for a cup of coffee as the only guest in Delhis Oberoi hotel even as it was being torn down for a makeover.