[3][4] Frederik Obermaier's work focuses largely on corruption and tax-havens as well as intelligence services, illicit arms deals and extremism from the far-right to Islamist groups.

[8] In a 6 May 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".

[13] After Panama Papers an unknown source handed over internal data from the national corporate registry of the Bahamas to Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer.

[14] The 38 gigabyte 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 respectively are directors, secretaries, or presidents of Bahamian companies.

[16][17] 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.

[19] Frederik Obermaier was part of a joint investigative effort of Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel which, in May 2019, revealed that Austria's Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party had – during a vacation on Ibiza in July 2017 – promised government contracts to a woman claiming to be a Russian millionaire.