The data firm that helped reporters crack the Panama Papers

Image credit: Pixabay.

Sometime early last year, the editor of a major German newspaper was contacted by an anonymous source. “Interested in data?” it asked.

What was passed on ultimately added up to 2.6 terabytes of document scans, emails, spreadsheets, transcripts, and contracts. The leak became known, of course, as the Panama Papers.

Journalists involved in the investigation finally broke the story in April, and the expected media frenzy followed.

Reading reports discussing what the leak brought to light, I kept coming across the name of an Australian software company – Nuix. According to Reuters, this firm’s tech was “instrumental” in analyzing the massive data leak.

Curious, I got in touch with Nuix CEO Eddie Sheehy and it turned out he was happy to talk, not only about the Panama Papers, but the company’s history and future.

17 children

Nuix dates back to the year 2000. At a Sydney university, a group of forward-thinking computer scientists was exploring ways to process large amounts of data at high speed.

The driving force in this group was Jim McInerney, an unusual man. Eddie shares a quirky anecdote: together with his wife Agnes, Jim had adopted seven children and fostered ten more.

The first type of file Jim and his team dealt with at scale was email, but later they learned how to reverse-engineer all major file formats, including complex proprietary ones like tiff images.

The group’s research led to the development of what they called the New Universal Intelligence Exchange engine: Nuix.

Understanding files “at the level of ones and zeroes,” Eddie explains, is what allows Nuix to achieve reliability and speed at scale. The software can work through mountains of files and make sense of them, converting scans into searchable text and prying out metadata.

Even early on, Nuix’ processing capabilities were so powerful that the first client to sign up was the Australian Department of Defense.

Then, tragically, in 2004 – soon after winning that contract – Jim McInerney died of a heart attack.

Revival

Market crash

Sense of purpose

Nothing is hidden