The Panama Papers Double Cross

This article is adapted from SPOOKED: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier, now on sale. 

When a consortium of reporters released the Panama Papers in 2016, they wanted to block one group from plundering the database which contained records disclosing the owners of thousands of off-shore companies used to hide enormous sums of wealth: corporate intelligence operatives, or private spies. The private spying industry has boomed in recent years and operatives-for-hire are increasingly invading our privacy, profiting from deception, and manipulating the media. For hired spies, information is currency and within the industry there is a lucrative underground trade in documents, including ones that are hacked, stolen, or obtained under false pretense.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists knew that spies-for-hire wanted to exploit the Panama Papers for their own purposes and profit so it limited access to the database to media organizations collaborating in the project. But the group would discover years later that one operative found a way into the Panama Papers and soon began offering them to other spies-for-hire, including Christopher Steele, a former MI6 spy and the author of the infamous Donald Trump dossier.

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