Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers
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(2020) 5:63
Applied Network Science
RESEARCH
Open Access
Structural studies of the global networks exposed in the Panama papers Mayank Kejriwal*
and Akarsh Dang
*Correspondence: [email protected] Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, 4676 Admiralty Way, Ste. 1001, Marina del Rey, California, United States of America
Abstract In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them. Network science can be applied as a scientific framework for understanding the structure of such relational, heterogeneous datasets at scale. In this article, we use an existing, relational version of the Panama Papers to selectively construct various networks, and then study the properties of the underlying system using well-defined analytical methods from network science, including degree properties, country assortativity analyses, connectivity and single-point network metrics like transitivity and density. We also illustrate significant structural features in these networks by conducting a triad census and exploring the networks’ core-periphery structure. Together, these results are used to show that the Panama Papers constitute a distinct class of networks that differ significantly from ordinary social and information networks. We also propose, construct and analyze ‘higher-order’ networks from the raw data, such as a ‘social’ network of officers. We confirm that some of these higher-order networks also show significant non-random deviations from expected or typical behavior, including in their degree distributions. Keywords: Panama papers, Offshore finance, Network science, Structural network properties, Motif analysis, Visualization
Introduction In 2015, an anonymous source leaked more than 11.5 million documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. Although the ‘Panama Papers’, as they are now termed, are now widely associated with investigating corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, the original goal of the (still anonymous) whistleblower, according to a released statement, was to expose income inequality and injustice. Because of the scope of the Panama Papers, the findings capture the impact of globalization as a complex network within a relatively constrained setting. These papers represent an important milestone in the use of data journalism software tools and mobile © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a li
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