The Panama Papers have shown links to secret offshore companies from major Chinese politicians to include President Xi. This is definitely a huge blow to to Xi who has been pushing anti-corruption reforms within China when his own family is hiding money. In response to this the Chinese government is claiming this is all lies and have launched a massive campaign to scrub all information on the Panama Papers from the Chinese Internet:
A huge leak of tax documents that revealed the secret offshore accounts of relatives of former and current Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, could be a part of a “disinformation” campaign by Western forces, a newspaper published by China’s Communist Party said Tuesday.
The revelation came after a year-long investigation by more than 100 media groups worldwide into 11.5 million documents, leaked from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, found offshore financial transactions by influential figures such as aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dubbed the “Panama Papers,” the leaked documents were obtained by a German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with media organizations worldwide by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
In an editorial titled “Powerful force is behind Panama Papers,” the state-run Global Times newspaper said, “The documents revealed do have basic political targets.”
“In the Internet era, disinformation poses no major risks to Western influential elites or the West,” it said. “In the long run, it will become a new means for the ideology-allied Western nations to strike a blow to non-Western political elites and key organizations.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link. The release of the Panama Papers does make me wonder if western intelligence agencies did have anything to do with the release of the documents? This would be a great shot across the bow to China and Russia to do more to stop North Korea’s provocations and nuclear ambitions or face the release of more embarrassing documents.
