wins 2017 Pulitzer

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was honoured with the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for its explosive work on the Panama Papers which sought to expose the offshore tax havens used by high-profile individuals across the world. The award was given to investigative journalists Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier who set the investigation in motion.
In early 2015, an anonymous whistle-blower led Obermayer and 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.

In a series of hard-hitting reportage, over 11 million leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca sent through encrypted channels revealed how the law firm had helped individuals set up shell companies to evade paying taxes. Pegged as the largest such data leak in history, the secret records of 214,000 offshore companies was revealed in the paper which also included over 500 Indian figures.