Case Study: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) decodes the Panama Papers and exposes global offshore networks with Talend

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - Customer Case Study

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a global network of investigative reporters, received an encrypted hard drive in May 2015 containing the Mossack Fonseca leak—about 2.6 TB and 11.5 million files. The team faced the daunting task of processing dozens of file formats, reverse-engineering a client database, and coordinating hundreds of journalists across countries while ensuring data quality for a public release.

ICIJ used Talend Open Studio for Big Data to integrate and document the extraction and transformation steps, converting over 3 million database files into SQL, then Neo4j, and visualizing results with Linkurious to support collaboration among 400 journalists in 80 countries. The effort produced a public Offshore Leaks database and led to revelations on 210,000+ offshore companies across 21 jurisdictions, links to 140 politicians, widespread investigations and resignations, and more than 70 million page views.

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Mar Cabra

Head of the Data & Research Unit