MOSCOW (Sputnik) — 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 and their circles in tax havens schemes. Some individuals allegedly close to Putin were mentioned in the report.
"In fact there is a lot of information on other politicians, on representatives of other professions, [the information] linked to the heads of state as well as governments of other countries but probably hardly anyone can dispute the fact that the world's media, both print and digital, quite inexplicably focused mainly on our country and our president. That is what we meant when we talked about this ‘bacillus of Putinophobia’ that infected many in the western community," Peskov said.
The spokesman underlined that Putin’s name was not mentioned in the leaked files even once.
"When we used words such as 'far-fetched', 'falsified', 'fabricated,' we meant that all of this has been covered in the shell of 'Putinophobia' and led by someone's orchestra," Peskov stressed.
On Monday, Peskov said, commenting on the reports, that "Putinophobia" had reached new heights.
Mossack Fonseca refused to validate the information contained in the leaks and accused reporters of gaining unauthorized access to its proprietary documents. It warned that using unlawfully-obtained data was a crime that it would not hesitate to punish infringers by legal means. One of the company founders in an interview with TVN TV channel has said that come documents had been stolen, but refused to specify, which ones.
