Six months ago the Panama Papers, the biggest-ever leak in journalism, shook the world.

Let us, the reporters who broke the story, recap what happened: the revelations showed how – despite there being legitimate reasons in some cases for using offshore financial vehicles – dictators and current heads of states, drug cartels, terror financiers, arms dealers, tax evaders and other criminals stashed their wealth in tax havens and used the convenient anonymity of offshore companies to hide their traces.

Demonstrations followed – in Iceland, Argentina, and Pakistan – and several governments tumbled. The then prime minister of the UK, David Cameron, was one of the prominent politicians who got into deep domestic trouble, even if in his case it was mainly because of the arrogance with which he handled the affair.

The Icelandic prime minister resigned, and so have ministers and bankers in Spain, the Netherlands and other countries. Official investigations have been launched in the US, Germany, Venezuela, Denmark, Australia and, a little unexpectedly, Panama.

Last Tuesday members of the European parliament witnessed the first hearing of the Panama Papers committee, which has the full title the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA). But nobody has nailed the problem of offshore quite as succinctly as President Barack Obama, who said: “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.”

The Panama Papers showed that there is a whole parallel world offshore in which the rich and powerful enjoy the freedom to avoid not just taxes but all kinds of laws they find inconvenient. We would argue that if we don’t dismantle this world, if we allow this second set of rules for the 1% of rich people who know how to exploit it, our democracy is at stake.

When we first looked through the Panama Papers files we were stunned by their scale and the hundreds of famous wealthy people who used offshore companies. Every day we found another member of the super-rich elite who held stakes in companies, bank accounts, helicopters and paintings worth millions. Others used those vehicles to keep creditors or former wives away from their estates, or to avoid litigation. Many founded trusts to make sure their heirs won’t have to worry about inheritance taxes.

Attempts were made to to keep tax authorities in the dark, and lawyers used every trick in the book to ensure their clients only paid the minimum amount of tax. Most of the dealings were manifestly incredibly unfair – but by the letter of the law, perfectly legal.

The US presidential candidate Donald Trump seems to think it’s smart to play the tax system. But it’s not smart – it is antisocial. It’s anti-democratic.

The offshore world is not designed for the blue-collar worker or the average earner. It’s not for the 99%. The Panama Papers showed us you need to own at least a solid million euros if you want to go offshore and see your taxes drop. And the more you have, the easier it is to pay less tax. This is wrong and we have to stop it. To be precise: we, politicians, citizens, taxpayers, have to stop it.

The rules that govern how lower- and middle-income earners pay tax have to apply to everybody. Otherwise our democracy is at stake. People will lose faith. There are already signs of deep hatred towards the elites and scorn for democracy. This will only increase if politicians keep ignoring this issue. Because here’s the thing – people know the world has got less equal.

And we all know what happens when faith in democracy diminishes: people vote for politicians who offer simple solutions, they vote for populists, for racists, for fascists.

A few weeks after we published our stories the leaker of the Panama Papers, an anonymous source who goes by the name John Doe sent us a statement. The first sentence was “income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It affects all of us, the world over”.

John Doe is right. Six months after the release of the Panama Papers the dust may have settled, but let’s not forget what we’ve seen. It’s time for action.