Politicians the most referenced occupation in Panama Papers

Politicians are by far the most mentioned people in the Panama Papers, according to a chart created by a data researcher from Denmark.

Using Wikidata to plot occupations associated with those featured in the leaked documents, Finn Årup Nielsen’s bubble chart appears to show that politicians are mentioned most often, followed by lawyers, business people, entrepreneurs, and those working in association football.



A bubble chart plotting the occupations of the people in the Panama Papers according to their profession on Wikidata Finn Årup Nielsen Photo via Independent

However, a senior researcher from the department of applied math and computer science at the Technical University of Denmark clarified that the flaw with the Wikidata means that only people who are notable enough to get their own Wikipedia page will be included in the data, which might mean many smaller business people featured in the papers don't count towards the bubble chart.



A number of past and present world leaders were named in the first leak as having offshore holdings. On Monday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published online detailed data from the Panama Papers trove on more than 200,000 secret offshore companies cataloguing the names of 259 Pakistanis who own shares in offshore companies.

The searchable database built on just a portion of the documents leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca reveals more than 360,000 names of individuals and companies behind the anonymous shell firms, the ICIJ said. Previously, 220 Pakistanis were named by the ICIJ. The database identifies at least 259 Pakistani people or companies that had roles in offshore entities.

However, setting up an offshore company is not in itself illegal or evidence of illegal conduct.

This article originally appeared on Independent.