From the winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting 11.5 million documents sent through encrypted channels. The secret records of 214,000 offshore companies. The largest data leak in history. In early 2015, an anonymous whistle-blower led investigative journalists Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier into the shadow economy where the super-rich hide billions of dollars in complex financial networks. Thus began the ground-breaking investigation that saw an international team of 400 journalists work in secret for a year to uncover cases involving heads of state, politicians, businessmen, big banks, the mafia, diamond miners, art dealers and celebrities. A real-life thriller, The Panama Papers is the gripping account of how the story of the century was exposed to the world.

Late one evening, investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels, he then receives documents revealing how the president of Argentina has sequestered millions of dollars of state money for private use. This is just the beginning.

Obermayer and fellow Suddeutsche journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in the secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found. Faced with the largest data leak in history, they activate an international network of journalists to follow every possible line of enquiry. Operating in the strictest secrecy for over a year, they uncover cases involving prime ministers, dictators, kings, oligarchs, princelings, sports officials, big banks, arms smugglers, mafiosi, child prostitution rings, diamond miners, art dealers and celebrities.

The real-life thriller behind the story of the century, The Panama Papers is an intense, unputdownable account that proves, once and for all, that there exists a small elite living by a different set of rules and blows their secret world wide open.