<P> On 20 October 2017, an anonymous Reddit user hinted at the existence of the Paradise Papers . Later that month, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) approached the offshore law firm Appleby with allegations of wrongdoing . Appleby said that some of its data had been stolen in a cyberattack the previous year, and denied the ICIJ's allegations . After media outlets started reporting on the documents, the company said that there was "no evidence of wrongdoing", that they "are a law firm which advises clients on legitimate and lawful ways to conduct their business", and that they "do not tolerate illegal behaviour". </P> <P> Appleby stated the firm "was not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act" and that "this was an illegal computer hack". "Our systems were accessed by an intruder who deployed the tactics of a professional hacker", the company said . </P> <P> The documents were acquired by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which had also obtained the Panama Papers in 2016 . According to the BBC, the name "Paradise Papers" reflects "the idyllic profiles of many of the offshore jurisdictions whose workings are unveiled", so - called tax havens, or "tax paradises". </P> <P> The data breach comprises some 13.4 million documents--totaling about 1.4 terabytes--from two offshore service providers, Appleby and Asiaciti Trust, and from the company registers of 19 tax havens . Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists contacted the ICIJ, which has been investigating the documents with 100 media partners . The consortium made the data available to these media partners using Neo4j, a graph - database platform made for connected data, and Linkurious, graph - visualization software . This allowed journalists across the globe to undertake collaborative investigative work . The documents were released by the consortium on 5 November 2017 . </P>

Panama papers and paradise papers have been released by which organisation