If one were to take the 11½ million documents and 2.6 terabytes of information that emanated from Mossack Fonseca’s internal database and compare it with the other great revelatory data-dumps of the past few years, the current set of data would exceed the rest by a factor of nearly ten. It has already led the premier of Iceland (pictured) to resign.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has published information from a massive data-leak that shines a light on the part that Mossack Fonseca, the fourth largest provider of offshore services in the world, has played in obscuring the beneficial ownership of wealth on behalf of its customers. The data comes from the law firm's files. The roll-call of customers includes tax-evaders, drug-dealers, corrupt politicians and Mafiosi. Half of all the companies that are mentioned in the data were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

The law firm itself appears to be less than squeaky-clean, never mind its customers. Legal papers presented to a US District Court in Las Vegas claimed that it had created 123 companies in Nevada that a crony of Argentina’s former president used to steal millions of dollars from government contracts. The court issued a subpoena ordering Mossack Fonseca to hand over details about any money that might have flowed through those companies. The law firm, according to the ICIJ, did not want the information to become public, so it denied that MF Corporate Services (Nevada) Ltd, which was running its business in Vegas, was actually part of its group. The ICIJ, on its website, recounts how Jürgen Mossack swore an oath to that effect, but its cache of records "show that the Nevada subsidiary was wholly owned by Mossack Fonseca [and] behind the scenes, the firm took steps to wipe potentially damaging records from phones and computers to keep details of their clients from the United States justice system."

Emails, according to the ICIJ, show senior figures at the firm asking for evidence of company ownership of the Nevada operation to be hidden from the prying eyes of investigators, and for people to remove papers from Nevada to Panama, the better to throw the authorities off the trail.

PEP lessons

So many lessons about 'politically exposed persons' are being drawn from the revelations, made in the last couple of days but long-heralded by Wikileaks, that it is hard to know where to begin. There have, however, been a few obviously important revelations.

Iceland

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, the prime minister of Iceland who had to resign today, secretly owned Wintris, a company based on the Caribbean island of Tortola, which owned and still owns debt in some of Iceland's failed banks just at the time when he was involved in political decisions about their future. His wealthy wife, née Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, owned half the company with him. He never divulged his shareholding to the Icelandic parliamentary register for MPs' financial interests. When asked the simple question “what can you tell us about a company called Wintris” during an English-language interview with SVT, a Swedish television company, he smirked guiltily, lapsed into Icelandic and, after floundering for less than half a minute, got up and a few seconds later walked out of the room.

United Kingdom

As British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn points out that the Panama Papers have revealed tax evasion "on an industrial scale" and suggested that the secretive company set up by premier David Cameron's late father might have ensured that "tax has not been paid," calling for an investigation into the matter, Cameron himself is keeping quiet about the family finances. This is still not relevant to compliance officers at private banks in the United Kingdom as the Financial Action Task Force's desire to promote 'enhanced/extra due diligence' for domestic 'politically exposed persons' has still not been enshrined in British law, but its relevance is only a matter of time. The data-leak has given Cameron other things to worry about: six peers, three Conservative former MPs and dozens of party donors have been swept up in the revelations as well. The three most senior seem to be Lord Ashcroft, the entrepreneur who resides in Belize, Baroness (Pamela) Sharples and Michael Mates, who was an MP and minister in the 1990s.

It is a classic offshore trick to anonymise holdings (whether for illict purposes or otherwise) by convincing local residents in tax havens to sign documents and act as 'front men' (the rather uncharitable money-laundering term is 'strawmen,' although the Camerons are not being accused of that crime) in place of the real investors. Mr Cameron senior, who died in 2010, opened a company in the Bahamas that did just that, using a local bishop to sign many documents. It was an investment fund for high-net-worth individuals called Blairmore Holdings Inc. It is reported to have invested dozens of millions of pound on its clients' behalf. One of those clients was the Rolling Stones' bank, Leopold Joseph. The Guardian has stated categorially that in 30 years Blairmore has never paid a penny of tax in the UK on its profits. A prospectus that it issued in 2006 said that the fund “should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes.” Perhaps actual tax evasion was not the aim, but it is also known that the structural contortions by which Mr Cameron senior obscured Blairmore's profits were expensive to arrange and therefore must have been of some very heavy benefit to the investors.

Meanwhile, at midnight last night, the prime minister's spokesmen were still denying that his family has had anything to do with Panama, the jurisdiction from which Mossack Fonseca operates. They chose not to confirm or deny whether the Camerons had used that firm to obscure their holdings or whether they still had a stake in the fund. Rather damagingly for the premier's image, they kept bringing up his many diatribes against tax evasion as some sort of indication that he was not involved. Tim Farron, the leader of the tiny Liberal Democrat Party, has stated with some justification that, despite his windy rhetoric, Cameron has "done nothing to ensure that UK Overseas dependencies such as the Cayman Islands, Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands give the transparency that taxpayers deserve."

A journalist for Sky News recently asked Cameron whether he or his family had in the past, or might in future, benefit from Blairmore but he refused to answer the question. Whatever state the prime minister's present holdings are in, it appears inconceivable that he has not spent the last few years knowing about his father's investments or that he is not going to benefit from them himself in future, if he has not done so already. Nobody has yet accused any member of the Cameron family of evading taxes or committing any crimes and, if HM Government refuses to conduct an 'unrigged' investigation, it is quite possible that nobody ever will.

The man who would be Czar

The ICIJ's most sensational revelations surround the friends of Russian ruler and would-be Czar Vladimir Putin. The consortium says that, according to its analysis, as much as $2 billion has been routed secretly through banks and shadow companies linked to Putin’s associates. The records do not mention Putin directly. The consortium says that Bank Rossiya, identified by the Americans (for whatever that might be worth) as Putin’s personal cashbox, has helped to build a skein of offshore companies and – in a possible allusion to a classic money-laundering trick, the obvious trick of transferring wealth through loans that are never redeemed – it says that dozens of loans, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were sold between offshore companies for as little as $1 or less in connection with the Russians.

Putin's network is held together by ties of personal loyalty. Banker Yury Kovalchuk and businessman Arkady Rotenberg, both old friends, the latter of whom has benefited from fortuitous government contracts, are part of the network. When reviewing the Mossack Fonseca data, the ICIJ discloses that "audio recordings and witness accounts show that even when Putin’s closest confidants privately discuss his financial dealings, they use pseudonyms for him or simply gesture to the heavens rather than utter his name." It adds that such a network could never exist without Putin's knowledge and encouragement.

The ICIJ says that the files contain an application in 2014 by Gazprombank Switzerland to open a bank account for a company in Roldugin’s name. The form explicitly asks whether the owner of the company has any relation to 'PEPs or VIPs.' Rather disingenuously, Roldugin’s representatives apparently said no.

The ICIJ, analysing its data, says of Sandalwood Continental Ltd, the company it reckons to be the lynchpin of the entire Putin-linked network: "One of Sandalwood’s roles appeared to be to borrow money from the Russian Commercial Bank (RCB) in Cyprus, which in turn was backed by Moscow-based, state-controlled bank, VTB. The loans RCB made to Sandalwood were highly unusual for a bank. They went to a borrower who had no discernible business model that would allow it to pay back the money. The loans carried no security. Most did not require installment payments but instead relied on a promise that the entire amount would be returned after a certain time span.

"Sandalwood also functioned as a link in a chain of loan-swapping shadow companies. It assigned the rights to interest payments in the millions of dollars to companies – including one of Roldugin’s, which paid $1 dollar to receive $8 million a year in interest [which] didn’t seem to make economic sense."

Sergei Roldugin - a cellist who became fabulously rich in later life - is Putin's best friend.

Crimea river

On the subject of the Ukraine's president since 2014, the ICIJ writes: “In August 2014...Poroshenko became the sole shareholder of Prime Asset Partners Limited, which Mossack Fonseca set up in the British Virgin Islands. A Cyprus law firm representing the newly acquired company described it as a “holding company of Cyprus and Ukrainian companies of the Roshen Group, one of the largest European manufacturers of confectionery products.” The firm wrote that, though Prime Assets Partners was for “a person involved in politics,” it had “nothing to do with his political activities." During his 2015 presidential campaign, Poroshenko had pledged to sell most of his assets, all of which were transferred to Prime Assets Capital, according to a news account.

“A spokesman for Poroshenko said that...although Poroshenko didn't include Prime Asset Partners in his financial disclosures, his financial advisers noted that neither Prime Asset Partners nor two related companies in Cyprus and the Netherlands hold assets. Although Poroshenko is the shareholder, his shares are managed by a licensed asset management company, and his assets have been held by an independently managed fund, Prime Asset Capital, since 2005, the advisors said. Those assets will be transferred to a "blind trust" once legal formalities are completed, according to the advisors.”

The allegation is that the president seems to have taken part in a 'smoke and mirrors' operation in which he pretended to divest himself of his holdings but instead transferred them all to a company he privately controlled.

More revelations to emerge

Editors will be poring over the data from the ICIJ for months to come, but PEP-watchers can already rest assured of a few things: the now-deposed premier of Iceland helped financial interests in bankrupt Icelandic banks even when he was involved in political negotiations over what should be done with those banks; the father of the prime minister of the UK founded a dubious company that went to enormous (and expensive) lengths to disguise beneficial ownership and his son is refusing to say whether he has benefited or will benefit; a network of financial skulduggery surrounds President Putin of Russia in the same way that a network of genocidal plotting once surrounded Hitler, affording Putin the same opportunity to deny involvement in money-laundering as Hitler might have had to deny his own involvement in genocide; and Poroshenko has been disingenuous in claiming to oppose oligarchs and prevent private interests from encroaching on the state. More revelations will doubtless come to light as anlaysts sink their teeth further into the data.