The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was honored with the Pulitzer Prize on Monday for spearheading a year-long secret investigation that produced a series of stories “using a collaboration of more than 300 reporters on six continents to expose the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens,” the judges said.
A cache of 11.5 million records belonging to Panama-based offshore service provider called Mossack Fonseca was leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
It was then shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) over secure platforms with over 100 partners worldwide, including Crime and Corruption Reporting Network – KRIK and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project – OCCRP.
“ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung deserve profound credit for pulling off this massive project,” OCCRP chief editor Drew Sullivan said. “It was an audacious undertaking. We are proud to have represented Eastern Europe and the CIS states and told those stories. It all added up in the end to earn this great prize.”
