I may have to wait until I’m on my deathbed Panama Papers whistleblower – Namibian

I MAY HAVE to wait until I'm on my deathbed.

These were the words of the anonymous whistleblower who leaked a trove of documents, known as the Panama Papers, which implicated Namibians and international names in dubious activities six years ago.

The Panama Papers, which The Namibian and more than 400 journalists combed through, included 11,5 million leaked documents that showed how the rich create offshore shell companies in tax havens to avoid paying taxes, to conceal their riches, and to engage in crimes such as money laundering.

The Namibian's investigative unit has produced several investigative articles since 2016 as part of the global reporting on the Panama Papers.

Leaked documents showed that Namibia's financial system was contaminated with mafioso money through Vito Palazzolo, who was once viewed as one of the most powerful figures in the Italian mafia, the Cosa Nostra.

Known only as John Doe, the whistleblower has never disclosed their identity or their gender.

They said they were motivated to speak out by a growing sense of 'instability' in the world, and from disappointment that more hasn't been done to clamp down on a secretive financial system that props up autocrats and enables people like Russian president Vladimir Putin to launch a war in Ukraine.

It's a risk that I live with, given that the Russian government has expressed the fact that it wants me dead, they said in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel.Doe, who only spoke out publicly once before, recently reached out to the two German journalists who had received the leaked documents in 2015 concerning the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The two reporters from Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, now work for Der Spiegel.

They agreed to share the transcript of their Doe interview with media groups (including The Namibian) that participated in the award-winning investigation under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Below is the verbatim interview, which was published in Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel (DS): How are you doing? Are you safe? John Doe (JD): I am safe, to the best of my knowledge. We live in a perilous world, and that weighs on me sometimes. But overall I am doing quite well, and I consider myself very fortunate.

DS: You stayed silent for six years.

Haven't you been tempted to reveal that it was you who made the secret offshore dealings of heads of state and heads of governments, drug cartels, and criminals public? JD: I have often wrestled, as I think many people do, with issues of being credited for my work. Fame was never part of the equation. At that stage, the only concern was staying alive long enough for someone to tell the story.

Making the decision to compile the data available to me at Mossack Fonseca took days and felt like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, but ultimately, I had to do it.

DS: You reached out to the German daily Sddeutsche Zeitung, which initiated a collaboration of more than 400 journalists, coordinated by the ICIJ. When you reached out to us, what did you have in mind? JD: When I contacted you, I had absolutely no idea what would happen or if you would even respond. I corresponded with many journalists who were uninterested, including at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

WikiLeaks, for its part, did not even bother answering when I reached out to them later on. (Editor's note: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal did not want to comment, and WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment.) DS: How satisfied are you with the impact of the leak? JD: I am astounded with the outcome of the Panama Papers.

What the ICIJ accomplished was unprecedented, and I am extremely pleased, and even proud, that major reforms have taken place as a result of the Panama Papers.

The fact that there have been subsequent journalistic collaborations of similar scale is also a real triumph.

Sadly, it is still not enough.

I never thought that releasing one law firm's data would solve global corruption full stop, let alone change human nature.

Politicians must act.

We need publicly accessible corporate registries in every jurisdiction, from the British Virgin Islands to Anguilla to the Seychelles to Labuan to Delaware.

Now.

And if you hear resistance, that sound you hear is the sound of a politician who must be sacked.

DS: Since 2016, thousands of Panama Papers stories have been published. Are there any you think the world still needs to see? JD: There are so many untold stories. One that comes to mind is a trust with yellow paper checks that was likely set up for a drug cartel by a Colombian consulting firm, in which a large American bank appears to have allowed direct use of its correspondent bank account with a bank in Panama.

Payees' names were typed on these checks with a typewriter. To call this arrangement unusual would be an understatement they might as well have issued checks made out of actual red flags.

DS: Edward Snowden once mentioned your case as being the best-case scenario for a whistleblower: You created a big impact and are still unknown and free. Is that also how you see your role? JD: I count myself as incredibly lucky that everything has worked out as well as it has, even if nothing is perfect. Remaining unknown has had the obvious benefit of keeping me relatively safe, but there has been a cost as well, which is that I have not been able to keep the issue in the public eye the way that Edward Snowden did regarding the National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping revelations.

Of course, he paid with his freedom to some degree. There are always trade-offs.

DS: What has your leak taught you about whistleblowing? JD: I would say the most important thing is that my example shows it is possible, although perhaps rare, to make a major difference and still maintain a good life. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of luck to stay one step ahead.

DS: Is there anything you would recommend to potential whistleblowers? JD: Telling the truth about sensitive matters is never easy. I would say that an underappreciated factor is just how difficult it is to keep a level head.

Whether you are talking to journalists or government authorities, be prepared for everything to move very slowly.

It's important to just breathe and find other things to think about from time to time.

DS: If you could turn back time, would you blow the whistle again? JD: In a heartbeat.

*Not his real name.

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer run Paper Trail Media, a German-based investigative platform.

Visit https://www.papertrailmedia.de/ for more.

Originally posted here:
I may have to wait until I'm on my deathbed Panama Papers whistleblower - Namibian