Man who blew the whistle on Putin's oligarchs said to be in mortal danger

 ICIJ reports:

The source behind the Panama Papers leak still fears for his and his family’s safety, six years after the global investigation rocked the world of offshore finance.

Speaking with German reporters Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier in his first interview since 2016, the source, who calls himself John Doe, cited the murders of investigative journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jan Kuciak and said he still feared retribution for his part in exposing the financial secrets of some of the world’s most powerful and dangerous people.

“It’s a risk that I live with, given that the Russian government has expressed the fact that it wants me dead,” he said in the interview, conducted for German news outlet DER SPIEGEL.

John Doe said he was motivated to speak out by a growing sense of “instability” in the world, and from disappointment that more hasn’t been done to clamp down on a secretive financial system that props up autocrats and enables people like Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch a war in Ukraine with little accountability.

“Putin is more of a threat to the United States than Hitler ever was, and shell companies are his best friend,” he said. “Shell companies funding the Russian military are what kill innocent civilians in Ukraine as Putin’s missiles target shopping centers.”

[...]

What became known as the Panama Papers was published in April 2016, and quickly became the most talked-about story in the world. Investigations from more than 100 media outlets exposed the secret offshore dealings of 140 politicians, as well as a bevy of celebrities, criminals and more, including some of Putin’s closest allies.

[...]

“I am astounded with the outcome of the Panama Papers. What ICIJ accomplished was unprecedented, and I am extremely pleased, and even proud, that major reforms have taken place as a result of the Panama Papers,” John Doe told DER SPIEGEL.

“The fact that there have been subsequent journalistic collaborations of similar scale is also a real triumph. Sadly, it is still not enough. I never thought that releasing one law firm’s data would solve global corruption full stop, let alone change human nature. Politicians must act.”