This article was originally published by The Guardian.

Two years ago we published the Panama Papers after an anonymous source provided 2.6 terabytes of internal data from the dubious Panamanian law firm of Mossack Fonseca. We shared the data with 400 journalists worldwide and together revealed how the wealthy and powerful use shell companies to hide their assets. Such companies are exploited by dictators, drug cartels, mafia clans, fraudsters, weapons dealers and regimes like North Korea and Iran to hide their shady business transactions.

Continue reading: the full op-ed can be found here.

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Frederik Obermaier is reporter for the investigative unit of the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung. Bastian Obermayer is deputy head of the investigative unit of the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung.

This article was originally published by The Guardian.