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The international financial and political crisis named Panama Papers (2016) provided a rather good material for information studies, particularly for digital diplomatics. First, the comments, in some languages, allow to analyze how media and newspapers use the words information, data, document, file and record, each with its own culture: some papers are directly written with the own words of the journalist, others are translations, showing notably the differences between English and French professional and common vocabulary. Second, it was also an opportunity to check the place of email in those cases of disclosure of sensitive data in the "society of information". The point is that the fragility of the digital files themselves (format, preservation) is not the worse for information and records management; the risk is more linked to the fragility of the international network and the ability of search engines to reach these records, wherever they may be stored.

Publication of the so-called "Panama Papers" focused public interest on how certain politicians, celebrities, and other elites may have used elaborate corporate structures and offshore tax havens to conceal their beneficial ownership of companies and obscure their personal assets. Rather than taking the Panama Papers as an indication of the need for more and stricter disclosure and reporting rules, this paper advocates an alternative approach. We need to start by acknowledging that many companies are currently experiencing "disclosure and reporting fatigue", in which the constant demand for "more" and "better" transparency and reporting is having the unintended effect of promoting indifference or evasiveness. The practice of disclosure and reporting is widely perceived as an obligation to be fulfilled and not as an opportunity to add value to a firm. This is confirmed by the findings of an empirical study conducted by the authors of this paper that examines how disclosure rules operate in practice across various jurisdictions. The key takeaway of the study is that—even in jurisdictions that have a robust disclosure regime—the majority of firms engage in "grudging" or "boilerplate" compliance, in which ownership and control structures are not adequately revealed in an accessible way and, perhaps more importantly, the impact of these ownership and control structures on the governance of a company is obscured. In this paper the authors advocate an approach based on the current communication strategy of a minority of firms in their sample—firms that engage in what the authors characterize as "open communication." These firms present information on control structures—and their effect on governance—in a direct, accessible, and highly personalized manner. Such firms seem to recognize the commercial and other strategic benefits to be gained from open communication. The paper explores the implications of such an approach for both business and regulators.

The article discusses the implications of Panama Papers on the 2017 general election in Malta. ; peer-reviewed

Abstract The Panama Papers is a collection of 11.5 million leaked records that contain information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. This collection is growing rapidly as more leaked records become available online. In this paper, we present a work in progress on a web browser plugin that detects company names from the Panama Papers and alerts the user by means of unobtrusive visual cues. We matched a random sample of company names from the Public Works and Government Services Canada registry against the Panama Papers using three different string matching techniques. Monge-Elkan is found to provide the best matching results but at increased computational cost. Levenshtein-based approach is found to provide the best tradeoff between matching and computational cost, while Jacquard index like approach is found to be less sensitive to slight textual change.

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the "democratization of tax enforcement," by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes.

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the "democratization of tax enforcement," by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes.

Using the Panama Papers, we show that the beginning of media reporting on expropriations and property confiscations in a country increases the probability that offshore entities are incorporated by agents from the same country in the same month. This result is robust to the use of country-year fixed effects and the exclusion of tax havens. Further analysis shows that the effect is driven by countries with non-corrupt and effective governments, which supports the notion that offshore entities are incorporated when reasonably well-intended and well-functioning governments become more serious about fighting organized crime by confiscating proceeds of crime.

Brazil has garnered the world´s attention recently with a backdrop of political scandals, corruption allegations, world-renown sporting competitions and an economy in turmoil. It has been nothing less than a roller coaster for the citizens of Brazil who have savored some of the ups and downs of the last ten years.In 2007 Brazil was the darling of the developing world. It appeared that the nation that is paradoxically called the "nation of tomorrow" had finally arrived at its tomorrow. With the commodity boom stocking its coffers, millions of Brazilians out of poverty due to the policies of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil could go through the recession relatively unscathed until the commodity market collapsed and Brazil suffered its own recession in 2015 along with series of political calamities. Aside from the impeachment of President Rousseff and Operação Lava Jato (the so-called Car Wash scandal that has implicated several politicians due to bribery through kickbacks they received through the oil giant Petrobras) that was in full swing there was another socio-political phenomenon that was not receiving the press coverage that it was deserving. The Brazilian government was and still is in a struggle to emphasize accountability in the realm of money laundering and illicit finance flows; this endeavor has proved cumbersome as off shore tax havens have and continue to provide a refuge for the funds of fraudulent companies such as Odebrecht and unethical individuals. The abuse of offshore tax havens by the Brazilian political elite, by the "outing" of the Panama Papers as well as the use of OFCs (Offshore Financial Centers) by Odebrecht has forced the Brazilian government to take action and stem the flow of illicit finance.The expanded version of this paper was written at the George Washington University, International Transcriminal Organizations.

This paper provides empirical evidence that, after fiscal scandals, individuals substantially revise their views on redistribution. I exploit as a quasi-natural experiment the 2016 Panama Papers scandal which revealed top-income tax evasion behaviour simultaneously worldwide. The empirical investigation relies on two original sources of data: a longitudinal dataset on United Kingdom households and a survey conducted in twenty-two European countries. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find an increase in pro-redistribution statements post-scandal ranging between 2% and 3.3%. Responses are heterogeneous on income levels and on political affiliations, with larger responses from right-wing individuals. The change in redistribution preferences is moderately translated into votes: I find an increase in voting intentions for the left and negative for the right-wing parties. Complementary estimations at the European-level indicate that pro-redistribution responses increase with media coverage and shock intensity (i.e., number of individuals involved).

This paper provides empirical evidence that, after fiscal scandals, individuals substantially revise their views on redistribution. I exploit as a quasi-natural experiment the 2016 Panama Papers scandal which revealed top-income tax evasion behaviour simultaneously worldwide. The empirical investigation relies on two original sources of data: a longitudinal dataset on United Kingdom households and a survey conducted in twenty-two European countries. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find an increase in pro-redistribution statements post-scandal ranging between 2% and 3.3%. Responses are heterogeneous on income levels and on political affiliations, with larger responses from right-wing individuals. The change in redistribution preferences is moderately translated into votes: I find an increase in voting intentions for the left and negative for the right-wing parties. Complementary estimations at the European-level indicate that pro-redistribution responses increase with media coverage and shock intensity (i.e., number of individuals involved).

On the 3rd of April 2016, the offshore secrets of the world's political and financial elites were made public, as a year-long investigation of one of the biggest data leak in history came to fruition. The so-called Panama Papers contained the names of heads of governments, celebrities, criminals and CEO's; and heavily represented in the leaked files, were the names of high-ranking Icelandic politicians and elected officials. This master's thesis is a sociological case study of Iceland and the Panama Papers, focusing on the political accountability process sparked by the huge data leak. Using a single-case, process-tracing approach, in congruence with an explorative design and a grounded theory approach to theory development, this thesis seeks to develop a conceptual framework for assessing the relative success of political accountability processes. Analysing the empirical case of Iceland and the Panama Papers through this framework, this thesis will argue that successful political accountability can be achieved in modern liberal democracies, despite the challenges of globalisation and digitalisation. By incorporating the global reach of a new type of activists, and integrating the technologically resourceful journalist collective into the accountability process, political accountability processes can catch up to the globalised elites and overcome the challenge of information overload.

This paper seeks to analyze the role of Tempo as a media and transnational movement actor in investigating the Panama Papers case, which involves high-ranking state officials in Indonesia. In this discussion will use media framing analysis, divided into two major dimensions of problem selection and emphasis on certain aspects of reality. Because Tempo is a transnational movement actor having an influence on domestic policy in Indonesia, there needs to be a study that uses the Boomerang Pattern method so that it can show the influence of its investigative efforts in finding news not only done alone, but also get help from other international media that has an important role such as in obtaining data access, information dissemination and media publications. Investigation of this news also shows that the media can have a real effect on government policy in a country.Keywords: Tempo, Media, Panama Papers, Transnational Movement.

A complex business environment calls for a flexible administrative law for the agencies that oversee corporations. No where illustrates this maxim better than Hong Kong, and its need to reform corporate regulations after the Panama Papers revelations. We describe how only a 'non-administrative' administrative law can best cope with the challenges facing the regulation of corporate governance. Such a flexible, results-oriented approach to administrative law develops new principles and tests, rather than gives civil servants instructions. Such an approach to corporate governance can facilitate the assessment of company governance, corporate disclosure, the self-regulation of professional groups like lawyers and accountants, as well as ensure corporations engage in 'legitimate economic purposes.' We engage with the literature, showing why such a flexible approach to administrative rulemaking would more likely reduce some of the government regulation and oversight problems exposed by the Panama Papers than previous approaches toward drafting and implementing administrative law (at least in this area).

This last title in the series covers the most important findings of the five years EU sponsored ANTICORRP project dealing with corruption and organized crime. How prone to corruption are EU funds? Has EU managed to improve governance in the countries that it assists? Using the new index of public integrity and a variety of other tools created in the project this issue looks at how EU funds and norms affected old member states (like Spain), new member states (Slovakia, Romania), accession countries (Turkey) and the countries recipient of development funds (Egypt, Tanzania, Tunisia). The data covers over a decade of structural and development funds, and the findings show the challenges to changing governance across borders, the different paths that each country has experienced and suggest avenues of reforming development aid for improving governance.

This article theorizes the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). This work is motivated by the need to link recent large-scale ICIJ projects such as the Panama and Paradise Papers revelations to ongoing theoretical discussions about emergent forms of journalism. It is argued that the ICIJ provides evidence of the emergence of a "global network journalism" characterized by a particular epistemology (a global outlook on social reality) that is embedded in a networked rationale. It is further suggested that this journalistic practice paves the way for the media's role as a global fourth estate, responding to the budding demand for a new type of reporting that influences political decisions and expressing society's development toward an internalized sense of globalization. We discuss the usefulness of applying the presented concepts to other cases than the ICIJ and provide suggestions for further studies.