Daily US Times: Several world leaders have denied wrongdoing after Pandora Papers leaked which unleashed a huge volume of financial documents from offshore companies.
Pandora Papers is the biggest such leak in history.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein and Russian President Vladimir Putin are among some 35 current and former leaders linked to the files.
Both of the leaders have issued statements saying they have done nothing wrong.
Jordan’s royal palace said in a statement that it was “not unusual nor improper” that King Abdullah owned property abroad.
Leaked documents show the Jordan King secretly spent more than s$100m on a property empire in the UK and US since taking power in 1999.
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson of Kremlin, meanwhile questioned the reliability of the “unsubstantiated” information, after it detailed hidden wealth linked to President Putin and members of his inner circle.
He said: “For now it is just not clear what this information is and what it is about,” adding that “we didn’t see any hidden wealth of Putin’s inner circle in there”.
The documents of financial secrecy and offshore companies was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Washington DC, which has been working with more than 140 media organisations across the world on its biggest ever global investigation.
The Czech prime minister said in a tweet that the allegations are an attempt to influence elections scheduled for this week and insisted he has “never done anything wrong or illegal”.
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said the investigation “will go a long way in enhancing the financial transparency and openness that we require in Kenya and around the globe”, and promised to “respond comprehensively” to the leak once he returned from a state visit abroad.
