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- [Voiceover] From UFO's to psychic powers,

and government conspiracies,

history is riddled with unexplained events.

(doorbell) You can turn back now,

or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

Here are the facts.

Sometime more than a year before April of 2016,

an anonymous source,

identifying him or herself as John Doe,

contacted a German paper named

the Süddeutsche Zeitung

with an extraordinary offer.

This source claimed to have access to around

2.6 terabytes of secret data from a Panama based

law firm named Mossack Fonseca,

which sold offshore companies around the globe.

The source did not want money

for this revelatory information.

Nor did the source want fame.

Instead, they would only say

they believed the firm was doing

real harm to the world,

and wanted this harm to cease.

The German paper accepted the leak.

They partnered with the International Consortium

of Investigative Journalists,

and spent around a year analyzing the documents

before going public with the largest leak

in human history.

So what, exactly, did they find?

Here's where it gets crazy.

At the time of this recording,

the world is still analyzing this data,

and what researchers have found so far

is profoundly disturbing.

In the documents, which range from the 1970's to 2015,

Mossack Fonseca is shown to function,

as the German paper notes,

"as a hub of a global industry led by major banks,

"legal firms, and asset management companies

"secretly stewarding the estates

"of the world's rich and famous

"from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters,

"and drug smugglers,

"to celebrities and professional athletes."

In short, to hide, transfer, and in some cases,

to clean dirty money.

By April 3rd of 2015,

the news had reached populations in countries

around the planet.

Heads of State and industry were implicated,

as well as kings.

Many of these individuals worked through their relatives,

squirreling away cash and, in some cases,

circumventing sanctions.

Sources traced money to Vladmir Putin,

the Prime Minister of Iceland,

heads of Chinese government,

Middle Eastern royalty,

Indian celebrities,

and even Jackie Chan.

These powerful people worked with Mossack Fonseca

to create shell companies in other countries,

informally known as tax havens,

an act which, in itself, is not inherently illegal.

However, journalists note the majority

of these operations were designed to hide

the identity of the actual owners,

in other words, the people hiding the money.

Some of these clients are out-and-out criminals,

like bank robbers and mafioso.

Other shell companies appear to hold bribery money

from corrupt officials.

In some cases, this means the leaks are proof

of illegal financial activity by some of the worlds

wealthiest groups and individuals.

Others think there may be more to the story, however,

asking why comparatively few Americans have been named

in the leak so far.

Could this be a result of a conspiracy

by one group to expose the activities

of a geo-political rival?

Does the timing have anything to do with the recent

Unaoil scandal?

At this point, it's hard to say.

Yet as journalists continue to dig,

and the average citizens of countries around the world

begin asking tougher questions

about what their leaders do behind the scenes,

one thing's becoming abundantly clear.

Mossack Fonseca and its over 300,000 clients

have something they don't want you to know.

And we've just begun to scratch the surface.

To learn more about the emerging scandal

surrounding the Panama Papers,

tune in to our audio podcast

on stufftheydontwantyoutoknow.com.

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