[3] The ICIJ was launched in 1997 by American journalist Charles Lewis as an initiative of the Center for Public Integrity,[4] with the aim of exposing international crime and corruption.

The Panama Papers were the result of a collaboration with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners,[5] with journalists spending a year sifting through 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.

[8] After working on the Mossack Fonseca documents for a year, ICIJ director Gerard Ryle described how the offshore firm had "helped companies and individuals with tax havens, including those that have been sanctioned by the U.S. and UK for dealing with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

[12] The Enablers Act, included in the annual defense bill, was first proposed shortly after ICIJ's Pandora Papers investigation exposed widespread exploitation of lax financial disclosure rules in the U.S.[13] Governments have recovered more than US$1.36 billion in taxes as a result of the Panama Papers project alone,[14] and some continue to collect lost tax revenue.

[23]: 23 The ICIJ partnered with The Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, the Washington Post, SonntagsZeitung, The Indian Express, Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR to produce an investigative series on offshore banking.

[26] In June 2011, an ICIJ article revealed how an Australian businessman had helped his clients legally incorporate thousands of offshore shell entitles "some of which later became involved in the international movement of oil, guns and money.

[29] In 2016, the Süddeutsche Zeitung received a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents from a secret source, created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.

[31] Based on the Panama Paper disclosure, Pakistan Supreme Court constituted the Joint Investigation Team to probe the matter and disqualified the Prime Minister Nawas Sharif on 28 July 2017 to hold any public office for life.

Lost tax revenue is one consequence of this hidden system; even more dangerous is its deep damage to democratic rule and regional stability when corrupt politicians have a place to stash stolen national assets out of public view.In 2017, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained millions of leaked files[34][35] known as the Paradise Papers, regarding tax havens, related to the Bermuda-based offshore specialist Appleby.

A whistleblower leaked documents from a law firm in Mauritius to the ICIJ, providing insight in how multinational companies avoid paying taxes when they do business in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

[43] In January 2020, Luanda Leaks revealed how Angola's richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, used a network of Western advisors to amass a fortune.

[44][45] The investigation showed how dos Santos and her husband, Sindika Dokolo, built their empire taking advantage of many secrecy jurisdictions.

[62] In March 2023, the ICIJ published Deforestation Inc.,[63] a nine-month investigation into greenwashing practices pertained by major environmental auditing firms.

[64] The roughly 3.6 million leaked documents were obtained variously via Distributed Denial of Secrets, Paper Trail Media [de], and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

They contain confidential information from financial services companies, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and show that country to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.

[75] ICIJ's cross-border collaboration, involves more than 140 newspapers, television and radio stations, and online media organizations, and is marked by transparency and peer scrutiny.

[80] In 2021, the ICIJ also won a News Emmy along with PBS Frontline for its Luanda Leaks investigation[81] and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the FinCEN Files.