Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. government Thursday of attempting to destabilize his nation by bankrolling reports concerning the Panama Papers, a massive cache of leaked documents that has linked one of his closest allies to an offshore account holding billions of dollars.
Speaking at the All-Russia People’s Front media forum in St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin said articles published by news agencies around the world earlier this week constitute “one more attempt to destabilize the internal situation [and] make us more accommodating,” Russian news agencies Interfax and Tass reported.
“Our opponents are above all concerned by the unity and consolidation of the Russian nation. They are attempting to rock us from within, to make us more pliant,” Mr. Putin said.
The Russian president’s remarks was the first time he spoke publicly of the so-called Panama Papers since an international consortium of journalists began publishing articles earlier in the week based off of a trove of documents taken from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian business that provides financial services to corporations around the globe.
While Mr. Putin’s name does not appear in the trove, articles have linked the Russian leader and other high-profile figures the world over with offshore accounts.
“Your humble servant was not there, but they don’t talk about that. But there’s still a job to be done. So what did they do? They make an information product — they found acquaintances and friends,” Mr. Putin said Thursday.
Indeed, among the individuals implicated by the Panama Papers reporting so far is renowned cellist Sergei Pavlovich Roldugin — a long-time friend of the Russian president and godfather to one of Mr. Putin’s daughters.
“Many creative professionals in Russia — probably half of them — are trying to do business and, to my knowledge, Sergei Pavlovich has been trying, too,” Mr. Putin told attendees at Thursday’s event. “What is his business? He is a minority shareholder in one of our companies, and he is making some money but definitely not billions of dollars. Nonsense, there is nothing of the sort.”
Referencing recent remarks made by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower group, Mr. Putin went on to suggest that the U.S. government is spearheading the Panama Papers reports.
“When officials from the U.S. State Department or the White House announce certain ridiculous things, it means that they’re designating themselves as a stakeholder,” Mr. Putin said. He said that Russia welcomes this, however, “because [then] we know who ordered the whole thing.”
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks said in a tweet that included among the dozens of media organizations involved in the Panama Papers reporting is the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), “which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID and [George] Soros,” the Hungarian-American philanthropist known for bank-rolling liberal efforts.
“WikiLeaks has showed us that official people and official organs of the U.S. are behind this,” Mr. Putin said on Thursday.
Their alleged efforts, he added, aimed to weaken Russia “by infusing some mistrust in society toward government bodies and the government, and by setting people against each other.”
The Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation — two pro-democracy groups started by Mr. Soros — were labeled as “undesirable” by the Kremlin last year and are no longer allowed to operate within Russia on account of allegedly posing a threat to the country’s national security and public order.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed earlier this week that “former representatives of the [U.S.] State Department and the CIA,” are involved in the Panama Papers reporting; and Victor Zvagelsky, a lawmaker in the State Duma, has separately threatened to file a libel lawsuit against Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspaper in Russia that has reported on the leaks this week with the help of the OCCRP.
Artyom Kiryanov, a member of Russia’s public chamber, asked the federal tax service on Thursday to investigate whether the newspaper received foreign funding through OCCRP, The Guardian reported.
OCCRP founder Drew Sullivan told The Guardian that his group has “never given a penny to Novaya Gazeta, nor would they take it if we offered.”
In addition to funding from USAID and Mr. Soros, the OCCRP also receives financial support courtesy of the United Nations Democracy Fund and the Center for Public Integrity, as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) — the group responsible for managing the Panama Paper documents.
“Claims that #PanamaPapers themselves are a ’plot’ against Russia are nonsense. However hoarding, DC organization & USAID money tilt coverage,” WikiLeaks clarified in a later tweet.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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