VIENNA (Sputnik) – The CEO of Austria’s Hypo Landesbank Vorarlberg announced his resignation, after the bank was mentioned in the so-called Panama Papers leak that allegedly exposed offshore financial activities of some of the world's most influential people, local media reported Thursday.
"The media prejudgment of Hypo Vorarlberg and of myself in past days was crucial for me in making this decision," Michael Grahammer said in a media release as quoted by the Austrian Der Standard daily.
On Sunday, Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung published materials it claimed came from the Panamanian Mossack Fonseca company, exposing alleged involvement of a number of world leaders, politicians and celebrities in tax havens schemes.
Mossack Fonseca has refused to validate the information contained in the leaks and accused reporters of gaining unauthorized access to its proprietary documents. It has accused reporters of gaining unauthorized access to its documents and warned that using unlawfully-obtained data was a crime that it would not hesitate to pursue through the courts.
