The Looming Mystery Behind the Panama Papers: How Did the Largest Document Leak In History Even Happen?

“Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data?” That line — apparently written in English and using an American cultural reference — is much of what we know about the source, possibly a hacker, behind the Panama Papers, a massive trove of documents on which four hundred journalists have been collaborating for up to a year, detailing how a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca has helped some of the world’s most powerful people set up shell companies capable of concealing vast amounts of wealth. The source reached out to Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, over a year ago, explaining, “I want to make these crimes public.”....
http://www.alternet.org/visions/looming-mystery-behind-panama-papers-how-did-largest-document-leak-history-even-happen+