Vladimir Putin Pretty Sure Goldman Sachs Was Behind Panama Papers Leak

Look, you can investigate the source of the leak all you want, but ole Vlad's already cracked this one: this thing was, quite obviously, the work of Lloyd Blankfein's men, working at the behest of the U.S. government, in an attempt to sully Putin's good name. Try a little hard to cover your tracks next time.

President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that information in the Panama Papers implicating people in his inner circle to offshore transactions was accurate, but dismissed the leak -- which he tied to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- as part of U.S. efforts to influence Russia’s upcoming elections...The Russian president, a former KGB officer who has called the Internet a “CIA project,” said Goldman Sachs owns the parent of the German newspaper that received leaked files from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The newspaper, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, is owned by a Munich publishing family and a German media group that has no corporate affiliations to Goldman Sachs, according to a statement from Stefan Hilscher, the managing director of the paper. The U.S. bank declined to comment.

Putin Sees U.S., Goldman Sachs Behind Leak of Panama Papers [Bloomberg]