The murder of journalist Daphne Caruaua Galizia deeply affected the person who blew the whistle on the Panama Papers scandal, according to an interview published by a German media house on Friday.

The interview with the whistleblower, who was only identified as ‘John Doe’ and whose gender has not been specified, was penned by Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer – the two journalists who received the original documents related to the scandal – and published by Spiegel International.

It is the first interview with the person who in 2015 contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and leaked more than 2.6 terabytes of secrets from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the most important service providers in the global business of offshore firms.

The leak soon came to be known as the Panama Papers, and rocked the political world in many countries – including Malta, where the Prime Minister’s then-chief of staff Keith Schembri and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi were both found to have offshore companies.

During the interview, the whistleblower was asked whether they feared that they would ever be the subject of retribution from the regimes which their leak had affected negatively – such as the Russian regime.

“It's a risk that I live with, given that the Russian government has expressed the fact that it wants me dead. Before Russia Today's media presence was curtailed due to Russia's attack against Ukraine, it aired a two-part Panama Papers docudrama featuring a "John Doe" character who suffered a torture-induced head injury during the opening credits, after which a cartoon boat sailed through the pool of his blood, as though it were the Panama Canal. However bizarre and tacky, it was not subtle,” the whistleblower said.

“We have seen others with connections to offshore accounts and tax justice resort to murder, as with the tragedies involving Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ján Kuciak,” they added.

Caruana Galizia was assassinated in a car bombing on 16 October 2017, with major businessman Yorgen Fenech facing charges for having masterminded the murder.  Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak meanwhile was murdered in his home along with is fiancée Martina Kusnirova on 21 February 2018.

“Their deaths affected me deeply, and I call upon the European Union to deliver justice for Daphne and Ján and their families. And to deliver rule of law in Malta, one of Mossack Fonseca's former jurisdictions,” the whistleblower said.

Neither Schembri nor Mizzi have faced prosecution for what was revealed in the Panama Papers, with it later emerging that their companies had listed Yorgen Fenech’s 17 Black company as a target client from whom they would receive the equivalent of €5,000 every day.