The Chinese government has banned talk about the so-called “Panama Papers” by the news media and on the Internet, according to reports coming out of the country. Several Chinese leaders and people linked to officials in the country have been tied to the scandal unveiled over the weekend.
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Those involved include seven current or former leaders in the country’s ruling Communist Party. They include President Xi Jinping and two more, Zhang Gaoli and Liu Yanshan, who sit on the party’s powerful seven-member Standing Committee.
According to several reports, posts about the leak are being scrubbed from Chinese social networks including Sina Weibo and Wechat, after the topic started to trend on those networks early Monday.
The so-called papers, which were comprised of 11 million documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and reported on Sunday, indicate that at least 140 current or former world leaders set up offshore accounts to conceal their assets. In total, the firm has set up more than 240,000 of those accounts.
Several Western countries have begun investigations into whether the information warrants prosecution. Those include Austria, Australia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden. The Justice Department announced on Monday that it would also launch an investigation.
In a statement provided by Mossack Fonseca’s Hong Kong office, the firm said it had never been charged with wrongdoing. “We do not advise clients on how to operate their businesses,” the company said.
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“Excluding the professional fees we earn, we don’t take possession of clients’ money, or otherwise have anything to do with any of the direct financial aspects related to operating these businesses,” the statement added.
In spite of a blackout by state-owned media in Russia, the country’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta carried a report detailing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s connections to the firm. The Kremlin has responded by calling the allegations “a series of fibs.”
