In a 6 May 2016[20] statement, John Doe cited income inequality, and said he leaked the documents "simply because I understood enough about their contents to realise the scale of the injustices they described".

Only days later, Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier published their book, titled Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money, first in German[21] and later in more than 15 languages.

The 38 gigabytes of data show that several current and former heads of state and government and high-ranking politicians, including former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes; Colombia's former mining minister Carlos Caballero Argáez; Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar; and Angola's vice-president, Manuel Domingos Vicente were directors, secretaries, or presidents of Bahamian companies.

The trove of 13.5 million records revealed ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump's billionaire commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, the hidden fortune of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau's chief fundraiser Stephen Bronfman and the offshore dealings of Queen Elizabeth II.

In fall of 2016 Obermayer met the French investigative reporter Laurent Richard in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where both spent ten months as Knight-Wallace Fellows.

[11] Richard had come to Ann Arbor with the idea of founding an investigative non-profit newsroom dedicated to defeating censorship through collaborative journalism – a field in which Obermayer had useful knowledge to offer, after having started the Panama Papers.