How the 11.5 million Panama Papers were analysed. Interview with Mar Cabra
by Roberto V. Zicari on October 11, 2016
“The best way to explore all The Panama Papers data was using graph database technology, because it’s all relationships, people connected to each other or people connected to companies.” –Mar Cabra.
I have interviewed Mar Cabra, head of the Data & Research Unit of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Main subject of the interview is how the 11.5 million Panama Papers were analysed.
The Panama Papers investigation was based on a 2.6 Terabyte trove of data obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ and a network of more than 100 media organisations. In this interview I asked Mar Cabra was her role in this data investigation, and how the 11.5 million Panama Papers were analysed.
The team of Mar Cabra used open source technology to analyse the Panama Papers, such as Linkurious and Neo4j.
They offer an "Offshore Leaks database" that can be used to track offshore companies and their relationships with people and places. So far the database has 7,4 million sessions and 44,2 million page view….So it is heavily used.
What is interesting is how ICIJ made all this data understandable to journalists that are not tech savvy...
You can read the full text of the interview at the ODBMS Industry Watch Blog. The interview also contains links to open source tools used to analyse the #PanamaPapers.