Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday acknowledged the accuracy of the Panama Papers revelations, but claimed funds had been spent on musical instruments as he blamed the leak on the United States.
The Papers revealed that Putin's associates, notably cellist Sergei Roldugin, "secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies," according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
During Putin's annual phone-in with the nation, a male caller asked the president why he did not react to "slander in Western media and "unreliable information about offshores."
Putin sighed, saying that "strange as it may seem, they are not publishing unreliable information about offshores. The information is accurate."
World leaders, aides and families, sports and movie stars are among those named in a huge leak of documents dubbed the Panama Papers, some of which reveal hidden offshore assets.
An investigation by more than 100 media groups has shone a light on assets held by some 140 political figures with help from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in Panama.
Offshore companies are not in themselves illegal, and there are numerous legitimate reasons for using them. But they can also be used to launder the proceeds of criminal activities or to conceal misappropriated or politically-inconvenient wealth.
Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing and said it has always complied with relevant laws and regulations.
Authorities across the globe have opened investigations into the activities of the world's rich and powerful after a cache of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm showed possible wrongdoing using offshore company structures.
The "Panama Papers" have cast light on the financial arrangements of high profile politicians and public figures and the companies and financial institutions they use for such activities. Among those named in the documents are friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin and relatives of the leaders of China, Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine.
Leading figures and financial institutions responded to the massive leak of more than 11.5 million documents with denials of any wrongdoing as prosecutors and regulators began a review of the reports from the investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media organizations.
Following the reports, China has moved to limit local access to coverage of the matter with state media denouncing Western reporting on the leak as biased against non-Western leaders.
In a regulatory filing with the stock exchange, Xi’an Aircraft International Corporation said chief designer Tang Changhong and chief engineer He Shengqiang have both tendered their job resignation letters on Nov. 16.
President Park Geun-hye replaced senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs Ju Chul-ki, Monday, amid mounting calls for her top security aides to take responsibility for failing to obtain four key technologies related to F-35 stealth fighters from the United States.
Ju was replaced with Kim Kyou-hyon, the deputy chief of the National Security Office (NSO), according to Cheong Wa Dae.
The reshuffle has been construed as Park censuring the secretary over the failure to receive the core technologies from the U.S., which dealt a serious setback to the nation's 8.5 trillion won KF-X project to develop indigenous fighter jets by 2025.
National Security Office (NSO) chief Kim Kwan-jin may face an investigation over his role in the controversial decision to buy F-35 stealth fighters from Lockheed Martin.
Kim headed a panel that selected F-35s over Boeing's F15-SEs as a defense minister in March last year.
The office of the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs began its probe last week amid growing allegations that the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) lied about the terms of the contract in order to help Lockheed win the bid.
The agency admitted that it failed to receive four core F-35-related technologies from Lockheed, and this is expected to cause a setback for the nation's 8.5 trillion won KF-X project to develop indigenous fighter jets by 2025.
Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according to two former employees.
They said the secret campaign targeted Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), AVG Technologies NV (AVG.N), Avast Software and other rivals, fooling some of them into deleting or disabling important files on their customers' PCs.
Some of the attacks were ordered by Kaspersky Lab's co-founder, Eugene Kaspersky, in part to retaliate against smaller rivals that he felt were aping his software instead of developing their own technology, they said.
"Eugene considered this stealing," said one of the former employees. Both sources requested anonymity and said they were among a small group of people who knew about the operation.
Kaspersky Lab strongly denied that it had tricked competitors into categorizing clean files as malicious, so-called false positives.
"Our company has never conducted any secret campaign to trick competitors into generating false positives to damage their market standing," Kaspersky said in a statement to Reuters. "Such actions are unethical, dishonest and their legality is at least questionable."
Executives at Microsoft, AVG and Avast previously told Reuters that unknown parties had tried to induce false positives in recent years. When contacted this week, they had no comment on the allegation that Kaspersky Lab had targeted them.
