Obermaier’s work focuses largely on tax havens, corruption, extremism and intelligence services worldwide. He has taken part in numerous award-winning investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Forbidden Stories project, among others.
Obermaier was part of an investigative team that revealed the existence of a video showing the head of Austria’s far-right party FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be a Russian millionaire. The reporting led to the resignation of Austria’s vice chancellor. Together with his colleague Bastian Obermayer, he initiated and coordinated the “Panama Papers” revelations after an anonymous source provided them with 2.6 terabytes of internal data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Obermaier co-authored an international bestseller about the project. Before the Panama Papers, he was part of the international team of journalists who revealed the “Offshore Leaks,” “Luxembourg Leaks” and “Swiss Leaks”.
Obermaier has received numerous honors for his work, including the CNN Award, the Otto Brenner Preis, the Wächterpreis, the Journalistenpreis Informatik, the Helmut Schmidt Journalistenpreis and, together with his colleagues, a Scripps Howard award, the George Polk Award for Business Reporting, the Barlett & Steele Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award (IRE Award). As part of the Panama Papers team, he won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in the category of “Explanatory Reporting”.