The Kremlin said on Monday it had seen no evidence in a massive data leak of financial documents of hidden wealth among President Vladimir Putin‘s inner circle despite allegations to the contrary from news organizations.
The dump of more than 11.9 million records was published by several major news organizations on Sunday and linked various world leaders or people close to them to what it said were secret stores of wealth.
The leaks published details of individuals the news organizations said were allegedly linked to Putin in some way.
When asked about the leaks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov questioned how reliable the information was and said that until something Moscow regarded as trustworthy was published, there were no plans to make checks on the information.
“For now it is just not clear what this information is and what it is about,” Peskov told reporters.
“If there are serious publications, that are based on something concrete and refer to something specific, then we will read them with interest,” he said.
Peskov said the Kremlin failed to discern what all the fuss was about in the case of the alleged Putin associates.
“Honestly speaking, we didn’t see any hidden wealth of Putin’s inner circle in there,” he said.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Alexander Marrow Editing by Andrew Osborn and William Maclean)