Frederik Obermaier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederik Obermaier (2016)

Frederik Obermaier (* 1984 in Eggenfelden ) is a German journalist , political scientist and book author . He is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). His main focus is on the Middle East, terrorism, extremism and intelligence services around the world. He is one of the German journalists who worked on the international offshore leaks , Luxembourg leaks and Swiss leaks revelations, as well as on the project The Secret War about Germany's role in the US drone war. Together with the journalist Bastian Obermayer , he initiated the worldwide Panama Papers revelations in 2016 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this in 2017 . Also with Obermayer, he was involved in the revelations of the Ibiza affair in 2019 , which ended in a government dissolution in Austria.

Life and work

Obermaier was born in 1984 in Eggenfelden and made 2003 the Ruperti-Gymnasium in Mühldorf the High School . He studied journalism and political science at the Catholic Universities of Eichstätt and Bogotá. He then worked as a freelance journalist before completing a traineeship at the Süddeutsche Zeitung . He has been working for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in the Investigative Research department since 2012 .

Obermaier is the author of the book Land am Abgrund - State Collapse and War Danger in the Republic of Yemen . In 2009, he became the first German author to report on the case of Yemeni Nojoud Ali, who divorced her husband 22 years older than she was ten years old.

For the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Obermaier was responsible for researching the offshore leak files, which made headlines around the world in April 2013. He wrote, among other things, about the offshore entanglements of Gunter Sachs , the subsequently resigned Austrian banker Herbert Stepic , the Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and the son of the GDR chief of espionage Markus Wolf .

Together with Hans Leyendecker and John Goetz , Obermaier revealed in June 2013 that the British secret service GCHQ had tapped the TAT-14 undersea cable that connects Germany with Great Britain and the USA. The cable is one of more than 200 fiber optic cables that the British secret service GCHQ is tapping and listening in as part of the secret Tempora program. The service apparently started directly at the cable nodes at communications companies and therefore did not have to access the cable from outside. Two telephone companies, Vodafone and British Telecommunications (BT), are said to have helped the British eavesdropping service.

Together with Bastian Obermayer and Volkmar Kabisch , Obermaier revealed how Germany's oldest weapons manufacturer, Sig Sauer , deceived the German export authorities into illegally delivering weapons to Colombia. The public prosecutor's office then initiated an investigation, and the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control temporarily stopped all of the arms manufacturer's exports.

Panama Papers

Obermaier initiated and coordinated the so-called Panama Papers revelations together with Bastian Obermayer . An anonymous source called John Doe had leaked 2.6 terabytes of internal data from the offshore service provider Mossack Fonseca to the journalists . Obermaier and Obermayer shared this with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - in the end around 400 journalists worldwide are working on the research. According to the opinion of the media involved, they show legal strategies of tax avoidance , but also tax and money laundering offenses, breaches of UN sanctions and other criminal offenses by Mossack Fonseca's customers.

Bahamas leaks

An unknown source leaked 38 gigabytes of confidential documents from the Bahamian company register to Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer , which were published as Bahamas leaks on September 21, 2016 . The revelations covered u. a. that Neelie Kroes , Amber Rudd , William Francis Morneau , Carlos Caballero Argáez , Manuel Domingos Vicente , Hamad ibn Dschasim ibn Jabir Al Thani , Süchbaataryn Batbold and Georg Freiherr von Waldenfels were or are directors, presidents or secretaries of mailbox companies in the Bahamas.

Paradise Papers

After the Panama Papers, Frederik Obermaier and his colleague Bastian Obermayer initiated and coordinated another international research project: the Paradise Papers published in November 2017 . The Paradise Papers revealed the offshore businesses of corporations like Nike , Apple and Sixt as well as celebrities like US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross , Queen Elizabeth II , Bono and Arsenal owner Alischer Usmanow . The research was based on confidential documents from the financial service providers Appleby and Asiaciti Trust as well as the company registers of 19 tax havens that had been leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung from unknown sources .

Ibiza affair

In May 2019, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer , Leila Al-Serori , Oliver Das Gupta and Peter Münch triggered the so-called Ibiza affair , and thus a state crisis in Austria . The SZ team, together with the news magazine Der Spiegel, published the research on a secretly recorded video that forced the then Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache to resign within less than 24 hours. Strache had fallen into a trap: in a villa on Ibiza, he had promised a supposed niece of a Russian oligarch that he would get government contracts against campaign support and explained an apparently illegal party donation system. In the course of the Ibiza affair, the Austrian government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz broke up within a few days . New elections took place on September 29, 2019 .

Publications

Awards

Otto Brenner Prize 2016

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frederik Obermaier, Author at International Consortium of Investigative Journalists .
  2. ↑ Bastian Brinkmann, Christoph Giesen, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Klaus Ott: Luxembourg Leaks - Trouble in the tax fairytale country of Luxembourg.
  3. ↑ Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Gerard Ryle: In the safe of the mighty. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 9, 2015, accessed September 15, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Florian Klenk , Josef Redl: "We are not the extended arm of the public prosecutor's office". In: falter.at. Retrieved May 12, 2016 .
  5. ^ Schwäbische Zeitung: Journalist Obermaier receives Pulitzer Prize
  6. ↑ tectum-verlag.de: Land am Abgrund - state collapse and danger of war in the Republic of Yemen.
  7. ^ Offshore Leaks - Tax Paradise in Distress , series of the Süddeutsche Zeitung
  8. ↑ Austria's most powerful banker resigns . April 4, 2013.
  9. ↑ Bastian Obermayer, Frederik Obermaier, Titus Plattner: Das System Sachs. Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 4, 2013, accessed on September 15, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Hans Leyendecker and Frederik Obermaier: Discreet business on the monkey rock - Franz Wolf and the Russian oligarch.
  11. ↑ , Bastian Obermayer The trail leads to Austria . 1st November 2017.
  12. ↑ , Frederik Obermaier Brits are skimming the German Internet . June 24, 2013.
  13. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Gun manufacturer under suspicion
  14. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Export stop for arms exporter Sig Sauer.
  15. ^ NDR: Pulitzer Prize for the "Panama Papers" .
  16. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: The Panama Papers - the biggest data leak so far. In: Süddeutsche.de. Retrieved April 4, 2016 .
  17. ^ What We Know So Far About the Bahamas Leaks . 22nd September 2016.
  18. ↑ , Vanessa Wormer These politicians appear in the Bahamas leaks . 22nd September 2016.
  19. ↑ Michael Forsythe: Paradise Papers Shine Light on Where the Elite Keep Their Money . In: The New York Times . November 5, 2017 (English, online [accessed November 16, 2017]).
  20. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Paradise Papers. Retrieved November 16, 2017 .
  21. ^ Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer: Paradise Papers: Questions and answers on SZ research . In: Süddeutsche.de . November 5, 2017 ( online [accessed November 16, 2017]).
  22. ↑ a b Leila Al-Serori, Oliver Das Gupta, Peter Münch, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer: Secret recordings weigh heavily on Austria's Vice Chancellor . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 17, 2019 ( online [accessed May 28, 2019]).
  23. ↑ Video scandal: Austria's Vice Chancellor resigns. Retrieved May 28, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kindestothilfe.de
  25. ^ CNN International: Home . July 20, 2017. Archived from the original on June 18, 2012.
  26. ↑ medium - magazine for journalists .
  27. ↑ 17 SZ journalists received awards . 1st November 2017.
  28. ↑ Helmut Schmidt Journalist Prize: The winners have been determined / Of oases, rip-offs and Amazon's migrant workers .
  29. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.informatik-saarland.de
  30. ↑ Current reports - News - newsroom.de .
  31. ↑ medium - magazine for journalists .
  32. ↑ Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc .: Investigative Reporters and Editors - 2013 IRE Award winners .
  33. ^ Formativ.net oHG, Frankfurt am Main / Karlsruhe: GERMAN JOURNALIST PRIZE Economy - Stock Exchange - Finances (djp) .
  34. ↑ Dr. Georg Schreiber Media Prize from AOK Bayern - Press . Archived from the original on November 7, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2016.
  35. ↑ Winner 2016 . 17th October 2016.
  36. ↑ Bayerische Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken award journalist prizes 2016 - Genossenschaftsverband Bayern (GVB) .
  37. ↑ 12th Otto Brenner Prize. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 4, 2016 ; accessed on November 2, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.otto-brenner-stiftung.de
  38. ↑ ING-DiBa is awarding the Helmut Schmidt Journalist Award / Of Offshore Acrobats and Exhaust Cheaters for the 21st time .
  39. ^ Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Business Journalism 2016 ceremoniously awarded - Handelsblatt publishing group .
  40. ↑ Bernd Wilken - administration: Reporter Forum: New Journalism .
  41. ↑ These are the journalists of 2016 - Medium Magazin Beta .
  42. ↑ Nannen Prize Winner 2017 .
  43. ^ Paul Farhi: 'Hello. This is John Doe ': The mysterious message that launched the Panama Papers .
  44. ↑ Winner 2017 . October 10, 2017.
  45. ↑ Price for Paradise Papers . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on July 18, 2019]).
  46. ↑ Prices for Implant Files articles . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on July 18, 2019]).
  47. ↑ Prices for Implant Files articles . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on July 18, 2019]).
  48. ↑ Research on murder cases awarded . In: sueddeutsche.de . April 12, 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed July 18, 2019]).
  49. ↑ dpa: Media: Reporter Prize for revelations on the Ibiza affair . In: The time . December 2, 2019, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed December 16, 2019]).
  50. ↑ ORF anchor Tobias Pötzelsberger is "Journalist of the Year" in Austria (FOTO). Retrieved December 16, 2019 .
  51. ↑ Nannen Prize 2020: These are the winners. April 30, 2020, accessed April 30, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Obermaier, Frederik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, political scientist and book author
DATE OF BIRTH 1984
PLACE OF BIRTH Eggenfelden