I’d read about the Panama Papers but big news events don’t last long and I wanted to get the journalists’ perspective on the story. When the story is that big, you don’t get to hear about the real people behind it.
I was surprised the journalists were so young [Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer are both in their 30s.] They had a really fresh approach and were keen to demystify the whole process to show what happens behind the scenes.
People were asking how they kept it secret for so long. They managed to work on it for a year without anyone knowing and their colleagues couldn’t understand how the pair were still getting paid but not producing any stories. You have to really believe in the story to work on it for so long. They said their main concern was keeping their source safe.
I asked if they knew much about the subject beforehand as obviously it’s very technical. They said they had a huge amount of support. They needed a global network as they didn’t know the politics of every single country. They had to learn so much due to the huge amount of data.
The story was big everywhere, at least in the western world. I’m from Italy and there was a lot of coverage in the Italian papers. It affected famous people that you see on TV. There weren’t as many politicians; it was mainly entrepreneurs and people the general public would recognise. Of course, there was the Icelandic prime minister – that was a big deal.
The scale was incredible because of the number of documents, but I don’t think people were surprised about the revelations. It was wide-reaching because it affected every country. A lot of it was illegal but a lot was tax avoidance – which is not ethical and not morally right but not technically illegal. The financial crisis was 10 years ago – how is it that people have been able to hide money away and not be touched by that?
We left the event asking what we can do as individual citizens. The journalists are going to carry on working on it because they see it as a duty. But they are journalists, not politicians or lawmakers – they are responsible to make sure these things come out. What we have to do is vote for those people who will fight against tax evasion and tax avoidance, which so many of us find unethical.
Camilla Giusti was born in Italy and moved to the UK to study economics. She now works in financial services. She considers herself lucky to call London home and loves travelling, art and anything food-related.
This event took place on 30 June in London. To find out about other forthcoming debates, sign up to become a Guardian member.
