A general view shows a building where the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca has an office in Shanghai. The firm specialises in creating offshore shell companies. Picture: Johannes Eisele

Founding partner Ramon Fonseca said the firm, Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies, had broken no laws and that all its operations were legal.

Nor had it ever destroyed any documents or helped anyone evade taxes or launder money, he added in an interview with Reuters. Company emails, extracts of which were published in an investigation by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organisations, were “taken out of context” and misinterpreted, he added.

“We rule out an inside job. This is not a leak. This is a hack,” Fonseca, 63, said at the company’s headquarters in Panama City’s business district.

“We have already made the relevant complaints to the Attorney General’s office, and there is a government institution studying the issue,” he added, flanked by two press advisers.

Governments across the world have begun investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful after the leak of more than 11.5 million documents, dubbed the “Panama Papers,” that span four decades.

The papers have revealed financial arrangements of prominent figures, including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain and Pakistan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the president of Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned, becoming the first casualty of the leak. France announced on Tuesday it would put the Central American nation back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. Alvaro Aleman, chief of staff to President Juan Carlos Varela, told a news conference the government could respond with similar measures against France, or any other country that followed France’s lead.