The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released its findings from a yearlong investigation into 11.5 million documents leaked by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca on April 3, 2016, revealing the underbelly of tax havens as they pertain to important people around the world.

According an article for Al Jazeera authored by C. J. Polychroniou, “In a world of extreme inequality and massive social problems such as ours, the economic, social, and political effects of tax avoidance due to the existence of tax havens are enormous…but while workers and small-to-medium-sized businesses are paying the full tax rate, global corporations and the super-rich have been paying fewer and fewer taxes over the years with…the spread of offshore tax havens.”

While placing one’s money in an offshore bank account for the purposes of benefiting from a tax haven is not technically illegal in many countries, it is considered tax fraud in the U.S. However, setting up an offshore corporation is perfectly legal and provides similar tax benefits.

“I think that while they are not illegal, in this day and age of economic insecurity, the concern is both how these individuals came into so much money and why they would feel the need to shield it, rather than keep said funds ‘at home’,” said Creighton political science assistant professor, Erika Moreno. “Imagine how public trust can be lost when citizens are asked to pay taxes on their income and claim where it came from, but their leaders do not.”

The fallout from the leak has ranged from Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson’s resignation after numerous protests to the relative apathy of Spain and Pakistan.

While only a few U.S. citizens have been implicated according to NPR’s Camila Domonoske. 

In an article by Will Fitzgibbon and Martha M. Hamilton of the ICIJ “33 companies and people blacklisted by the U.S. government appear in Mossack Fonseca’s files.”

“Some of the concern here is about the connection between this ‘dark network’ (that which is set up purposely to evade the legal system) and other dark networks that house terror networks, human slavery and the like,” said Moreno when asked about why Mossack Fonseca’s involvement with the blacklisted companies and individuals is significant despite their company being outside U.S. jurisdiction.

 “I think the U.S. is far more concerned with terror — financing that almost anything else — but the concerns of the international community regarding international crime leads the U.S. and others to be concerned with these individuals and companies.”

The names included in the leak range from high level politicians and businesspeople to soccer superstars like Lionel Messi.