Panama Papers: You can now search the secret accounts of the global rich yourself

Some of the information from the Panama Papers, a vast trove of more than 11 million leaked documents that have cast a light into the shadowy world of offshore finance, is now available to the public for the first time.

The documents come from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-based law firm with offices around the world. An anonymous source gave the documents to German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, which then recruited the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to help lead a global investigation into the material.

PANAMA PAPERS: SEARCH THE DATABASE HERE

Over the past month, media organisations around the globe have published articles with information drawn from the papers. The findings have uncovered the offshore holdings of 12 world leaders, more than 128 other politicians, and dozens of tax evaders, drug traffickers, money launderers and other criminals. The revelations have sparked protests, triggered arrests and led to high-profile resignations, including the prime minister of Iceland.

The searchable database below includes nearly 214,000 entities from the Panama Papers spanning 40 years, from 1977 through 2015. Where available, the database reveals the names of the real owners --called the "beneficial owners" - of offshore companies, trusts and foundations. This information is usually kept hidden from the public by the anonymity that offshore structures provide.

The database also includes information on the intermediaries, such as banks and law firms, that were typically the point of contact between Mossack Fonseca and the real owners of offshore companies. The data shows registered addresses for companies and the connections between corporate entities, owners and intermediaries, and allows you to filter by country or jurisdiction.

The database also includes information on more than 100,000 additional offshore entities, which were revealed in another leak of offshore documents covered by ICIJ in 2013.

This searchable database actually contains just a fraction of the material in the Panama Papers; it excludes the company emails, financial transactions, scanned passports, and other raw documents that make up the bulk of the leak. Not every owner of a company in the Panama Papers appears in the public database, ICIJ says, since some of that information is contained only in Mossack Fonseca's emails and internal documents and cannot be systematically extracted.

ICIJ says it is publishing the database in the public interest. The anonymous leaker who first gave the documents to journalists also described the leak as an effort to fight against inequality and injustice in a manifesto issued last week, which argued that shell companies are used to carry out a wide array of serious crimes.