A quick rundown in English of some of the personalities from the Balkans region who figure in the Panama papers.
If you read Serbian, here is in-depth coverage by RFE/RL's Balkans Service.
Russian journalist Maria London, of the local Novosibirsk television channel NTN, has given an outraged editorial report on the Panama leak and the Russian officials named in it, contrasting their wealth with the Draconian cuts in Russian social services, including the recent closure of all special rehabilitation centers for the country's blind. She notes that the centers, which serve 80,000 blind Russians, cost less annually than the apartment that was recently linked to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
Here is London's full report, in Russian:
Nice Financial Times piece on how the corruption revealed in the Panama leaks has basically priced most Britons out of the London housing market:
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"Since 2004 £180m of UK property has been subject to criminal investigation as suspected proceeds of corruption, according to Transparency International data from 2015. Yet this probably represented “only a small proportion of the total”, added the campaign group.
"Most of these properties were bought using anonymous shell companies based in offshore tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands. Overseas companies own 100,000 properties in England and Wales, Land Registry data show."
And, along the same lines, watch this BBC documentary on how the corrupt real-estate deals in London are done:
This overview of the Panama papers in The Independent has an interesting embedded visualization showing how deeply implicated each country is by the revelations.
Putin denies links to leaked offshore documents:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the Panama Papers document-leaks scandal as part of Western attempts to undermine Moscow.
Speaking on April 7 at a media forum in St. Petersburg, Putin described the documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm as part of a Western disinformation campaign.
"Our opponents are above all concerned by the unity and consolidation of the Russian nation, our multinational Russian people. They are attempting to rock us from within, to make us more obedient," he said, in his first comments over the scandal.
Some 11.5 million documents were leaked from the Mossack Fonseca law firm, which specializes in making offshore arrangements for the world's rich and famous.
Putin was not specifically named in any of the leaked documents, but some of his friends and associates were.
Putin rejected that his longtime friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin, who figured in the Panama Papers as the owner of $2 billion in offshore assets, was involved in any wrongdoing. (Reuters, AP)
Here's another video from our multimedia department:
Panama Papers Protests: Iceland vs. Russia
How did Icelanders and Russians react to their respective officials being implicated in the Panama Papers scandal?
