Frederik Obermaier

Works

Frederik Obermaier's work focuses largely on corruption and tax-havens as well as intelligence services, illicit arms deals and extremism from the far-right to Islamist groups. Together with a group of journalists from Süddeutsche Zeitung and German public broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk he uncovered Germany's role in the US drone war, especially the role of the airbase in Ramstein. Obermaier and his colleagues also revealed that the British intelligence service GCHQ had acceess to the communication-cables TAT-14, Atlantic Crossing 1, Circe North, Circe South, Flag Atlantic-1, Flag Europa-Asia, SeaMeWe-3 and SeaMeWe-4, Solas, UK France 3, UK Netherlands-14, Ulysses, Yellow and the Pan European Crossing.

Panama Papers

To an unknown date a source who called itself John Doe leaked the documents 11.5 million internal documents created by Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca to Obermaier and his colleague Bastian Obermayer. "My life is in danger", he told them. In a May 6 statement, John Doe cited income inequality, and said he leaked the documents "simply because I understood enough about their contents to realise the scale of the injustices they described". He added that he has never worked for any government or intelligence agency and expressed willingness to help prosecutors. The two journalist shared the documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analyzed documents detailing the operations of the law firm. After more than a year of analysis, the first news stories were published on April 3, 2016.

Obermaier and Obermayer in April 2016 also published the best selling book "Panama Papers" about their experiences with John Doe and the following worldwide revelations. It was translated to more than ten languages. In 2016 Netflix acquired the exclusive film rights to the book.

Bahamas-Leaks

After Panama Papers an unknown source handed over internal data from the national corporate registry of the Bahamas to Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer. The 38 gigabyte of data show that several current and former heads of state and government and high-ranking politicians, including former EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes; Colombia’s former mining minister Carlos Caballero Argáez; Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar; and Angola’s vice-president, Manuel Domingos Vicente were respectively are directors, secretaries, or presidents of Bahamian companies.

Awards and honours

Obermaier has received numerous awards, among others the CNN-Award in 2011 and the Helmut Schmidt Prize in 2013. He was voted, together with his colleagues Bastian Obermayer and Vanessa Wormer, "German Journalist of the Year 2016".

Publications