DHAKA: One of the founders of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers revelations on offshore holdings, said his company was hacked.

Ramon Fonseca said the leak was not caused by an insider but that the company was hacked by servers abroad, reports Al Jazeera.

The leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca showed how the world’s rich and powerful are able to stash their wealth and avoid taxes.

The law firm is based in Panama and has more than 40 offices worldwide.

‘We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This is a hack,’ Fonseca, 63, told Reuters news agency at the company’s headquarters in Panama City’s business district.

‘We have a theory and we are following it.’

Fonseca said that the firm had lodged a criminal complaint with Panamanian prosecutors on Monday over the alleged server breach.

Fonseca also said that in all the reporting on the Panama Papers so far ‘nobody is talking of the hack, and that is the only crime that has been committed’.

In a telephone message responding to questions from AFP news agency, Fonseca said, ‘We have lodged a complaint. We have a technical report that we were hacked by servers abroad’.

He also rued the fact that reporting on the 11.5 million documents taken from Mossack Fonseca’s computer system focused on the high-profile clients who had used the law firm to set up offshore companies to hold their wealth.

BDST: 2107 HRS, APR 06, 2016
RR