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Panama Papers Continue to Shake Leaders, Including Cameron and Putin

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Putin Dismisses Panama Papers Accusations

During an appearance on Russian TV, President Vladimir V. Putin deflected accusations that some of his close associates had shoveled billions through offshore accounts, characterizing them as attempts to destabilize Russia.

SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN PRESIDENT, VLADIMIR PUTIN, SAYING: “More than anything our opponents are concerned not with it, but with the unity and consolidation of the Russian nation, of multinational Russian people. Because of that attempts are made to destabilise the situation from within, to make us more agreeable and to shape us the way they want.”

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During an appearance on Russian TV, President Vladimir V. Putin deflected accusations that some of his close associates had shoveled billions through offshore accounts, characterizing them as attempts to destabilize Russia.CreditCredit...Pool photo by Dmitri Lovetsky

MOSCOW — The reverberations from a leaked trove of Panamanian documents rippled through several nations on Thursday, with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia calling the exposure of a proliferation of shell companies and tax havens an American plot, while Iceland picked a new prime minister and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain admitted that he had profited from an offshore trust.

After days of contention, Mr. Cameron admitted that he had earned money through an offshore trust established by his late father, who was named as a client of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the documents known as the Panama Papers.

Mr. Cameron told ITV News that he and his wife, Samantha, owned shares in Blairmore investment trust, before selling them for about £30,000, or $42,160, in 2010, the year he became prime minister.

The dividends were taxed, Mr. Cameron said, adding that he had never tried to hide the fact that his parents were wealthy. He had, however, been on the defensive over the issue since Monday, when his office initially described the question of his investments as a “private matter.”

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From left, the cellist Sergei P. Roldugin, Vladimir V. Putin and Dmitry Medvedev at the House of Music in St. Petersburg in 2009.Credit...Pool photo by Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik / Kremlin

The Panama Papers were also embarrassing for Mr. Cameron because they identified the British Virgin Islands, an overseas territory of Britain, as a major center of offshore activity. That prompted critics to call into question Mr. Cameron’s claims to be leading the international fight against tax evasion.

“David Cameron, who described the use of complex tax avoidance schemes as ‘morally wrong,’ has been forced to admit that he held shares in a fund now linked to tax avoidance,” said Tom Watson, the deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party.

In Moscow, Mr. Putin dismissed reports based on the legal documents, which showed that some of his close associates had moved about $2 billion through offshore accounts, calling the accusations an American plot to try to destabilize Russia.

Mr. Putin, in his first public remarks on the subject, noted that none of the accusations were aimed at him directly, because he was not named in the papers, even if the international coverage has focused on him.

“Your humble servant is not there; there is nothing to talk about,” he said at a public forum for regional journalists in St. Petersburg that was broadcast live by state-run television.

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David Cameron Admits to Offshore Account

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain admitted to having offshore trust holdings until just a few months before he ran for office.

EXETER, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (APRIL 7, 2016) (Broadcasters: ITN - NO ACCESS ALL DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL CHANNELS DISTRIBUTED IN UK & EIRE ON SKY/VIRGIN/FREEVIEW; BBC/SKY: NO ACCESS WORLDWIDE ANY MEDIA; MUST ON SCREEN CREDIT: ITV NEWS EXCLUSIVE Digital: ITN - NO ACCESS.CO.UK WEB SITES AND ALL WEBSITES PRINCIPALLY TARGETED AT THE UK AND/OR EIRE; MOBILE: NO ACCESS WORLDWIDE; MUST ON SCREEN CREDIT: ITV NEWS EXCLUSIVE NO USE AFTER 30 DAYS ON ALL PLATFORMS - FOR RE-USE CONTACT SALES[AT]ITNSOURCE.COM) // (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, DAVID CAMERON, SAYING: “I did, Samantha and I had a joint account - we owned 5,000 units in Blairmore Investment Trust which we sold in January 2010. That was worth something like 30,000 pounds.” REPORTER: “Was there a profit on it?” CAMERON: “I paid income tax on the dividends, but there was a profit on it, but it was less than the capital gains tax allowance, so I didn’t pay capital gains tax. But it was subject to all the UK taxes in all the normal ways.” // (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, DAVID CAMERON, SAYING: “He left me some money, very generously, quite a lot of money, and I have been able to…” REPORTER: “Can you tell us how much?” CAMERON: “I think it was published at the time, it was 300,000 pounds; it was published at the time, as these things are.” // (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, DAVID CAMERON, SAYING: REPORTER: “But therefore you can’t be certain that some of that 300,000 didn’t come from offshore sources, presumably?” CAMERON: “Well he had investments in Blairmore Investment Trust…” REPORTER: “And money in Jersey.” CAMERON: “That was because of another unit trust, again established to industry standard and all the rest of it, and many people have those investments. But in all of this, I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a very lucky person and had wealthy parents who gave me a great upbringing, who paid for me to go to an amazing school. I’ve never tried to pretend to be anything I’m not.”

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Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain admitted to having offshore trust holdings until just a few months before he ran for office.CreditCredit...Dan Kitwood - Reuters

Mr. Putin also defended the cellist Sergei P. Roldugin, an old, close friend who was named in the leaked papers. Mr. Roldugin was at the center of a scheme to hide money from Russian state banks, the reports said.

Mr. Putin said that Mr. Roldugin had tried his hand at business to support his love of music. “He is a minority shareholder in one of our companies and makes some money out of it, but not billions of dollars, of course,” Mr. Putin said. “That is nonsense.”

Mr. Roldugin used the money to import musical instruments, Mr. Putin said. “Almost all the money he earned he spent on musical instruments that he bought abroad,” he said, adding that Mr. Roldugin recently began donating the instruments to government institutions.

On paper, Mr. Roldugin’s shares in enterprises linked to friends of Mr. Putin, especially Bank Rossiya, give him a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars. “I am proud to have friends like him,” Mr. Putin said, calling Mr. Roldugin a “brilliant musician.”

There was an immediate reaction on social media, with many people questioning the president’s version of events. Sergei Parkhomenko, a journalist, wrote on Facebook that at $6 million each, the $2 billion reported to have been stashed offshore was enough to buy more than 300 of the rare violins, cellos and other stringed instruments made in the 17th and 18th centuries by Antonio Stradivari.

Mr. Putin also rolled out a standard Kremlin excuse for any bad news regarding Russia from abroad. Russia, he said, deprives the West of its monopoly on economic and military power, which irks the West.

“In this connection, attempts are made to weaken us from within, make us more acquiescent and make us toe their line,” he said. “What is the easiest way of doing this? It is to spread distrust for the ruling authorities and the bodies of power within society and to set people against each other.”

Mr. Putin noted that WikiLeaks had described the leaked Panamanian documents as an American-funded plot. “We now know from WikiLeaks that officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this,” said Mr. Putin.

The WikiLeaks organization posted several somewhat contradictory messages on Twitter about the subject.

“US govt funded #PanamaPapers attack story on Putin via USAID,” said one on Tuesday, for example. “Some good journalists but no model for integrity.”

But after the Russian state news media began citing WikiLeaks as proof that the Panama revelations had been an American plot, the WikiLeaks Twitter account said, “Claims that #PanamaPapers themselves are a ‘plot’ against Russia are nonsense.”

In Argentina, a federal prosecutor sought to open a criminal investigation into the business activities of President Mauricio Macri that were made public by the leaked papers. The prosecutor, Federico José Delgado, said in a document that Mr. Macri’s involvement in offshore companies warranted a judicial investigation, chiefly because he did not disclose the activity in required declarations of his assets.

The leaked papers showed that Mr. Macri was a director of an offshore company, Fleg Trading Ltd., which was owned by his father. It was incorporated in the Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved in 2009. Mr. Macri was separately found to have been a director at a second offshore company, Kagemusha S.A., that also involved his father.

Mr. Macri’s office said he had never been a shareholder at Fleg Trading and so was not required to disclose his involvement. “Everything’s in order,” Mr. Macri told the local news media this week.

There has been no official comment on the second company. On Thursday, Mr. Macri, who campaigned on fighting corruption, reiterated that he was innocent. “I have nothing to hide,” he said during a short speech to announce a freedom of information bill.

And in Iceland, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, the country’s agriculture and fisheries minister, said that he had secured President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson’s backing to become prime minister.

The announcement came after Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson stepped down as prime minister when the leaks showed that he had owned an offshore firm with his wife.

Neil MacFarquhar reported from Moscow, and Stephen Castle from London. Jonathan Gilbert contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Putin Says Panama Papers Are an American Plot. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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