Paper Trail Media

Paper Trail Media is an investigative start-up based in Munich. The editorial team, founded in 2022 by two Pulitzer Prize winners, Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, works for the news magazine Der Spiegel, ZDF, the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard and the Swiss Tamedia group. With Obermayer and Obermaier as well as the Austrian Christo Buschek, a total of three Pulitzer Prize winners work for Paper Trail Media - more than in any other European media company.

Well-known employees

 * Sophia Baumann
 * Christo Buschek
 * Maria Christopher
 * Hannes Munzinger
 * Frederik Obermaier
 * Bastian Obermayer
 * Hakan Tanriverdi

Xinjiang Police Files
In 2023, the Paper Trail Media journalists Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, together with the Der Spiegel journalist Christoph Giesen, initiated the Xinjiang Police Files research into the mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. These were taken up by, among others, the UN human rights representative Michelle Bachelet in her criticism of the Chinese government.

Vulkan Files
Paper Trail Media coordinated the Vulkan files leak revelations together with Spiegel in 2023. More than 50 journalists - including from The Washington Post, The Guardian and Le Monde - analyzed top secret data from the Russian company NTC Vulkan, which produces software for hacking attacks and disinformation campaigns for Russian secret services.

Cyprus Confidential
In collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media examined over 3 million documents from Cyprus as part of the Cyprus Confidential investigation about shell companies through which, among other things, covert payments were made to the journalist Hubert Seipel, and the oligarch Alexei Mordashov tried to circumvent sanctions from the European Union Union against Russia.