Image copyright AFP Image caption President Juan Carlos Varela is determined to ensure Panama's reputation is not besmirched by the scandal 
 
 Panama is creating an international panel to help improve transparency in its offshore financial industry. 
 
 The move follows the leak of millions of documents from law firm Mossack Fonseca, showing it helped some clients evade tax and avoid sanctions. 
 
 Several countries are probing possible financial crimes by the rich and powerful in the aftermath of the leak. 
 
 President Juan Carlos Varela said Panama would work with other countries over the revelations. 
 
 "The Panamanian government, via our foreign ministry, will create an independent commission of domestic and international experts," he said in a televised address. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption The leaks from Mossack Fonseca's offices in Panama have created a worldwide media storm 
 
 The panel, he said, would examine working practices and propose measures that could be shared to strengthen the transparency of the financial and legal systems. 
 
 Correspondents say the president is eager to defend his country against a "media attack" by wealthy countries that he says are unfairly stigmatising him following the leak. 
 
 Are you in Panama? What is your reaction to the Panama Papers scandal? Send us your views and reaction. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk 
 
 Mossack Fonseca, for its part, says that it has been the victim of a hack. 
 
 Mossack Fonseca partner Ramon Fonseca insisted the leak was not an "inside job" - the company had been hacked by servers based abroad. 
 
 It has now filed a complaint with the Panamanian attorney general's office. 
 
 Mr Fonseca served as a minister in the government of current President Juan Carlos Varela but stepped aside earlier this year after separate allegations linked the firm to the corruption scandal engulfing the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras. 
 
 Mossack Fonseca's Brazilian arm was accused of helping several of those accused in the Petrobras case of opening offshore companies in Panama in order to launder money through property transactions. 
 
 Mr Fonseca said he had stepped aside "to defend my honour and my firm" and denies any wrongdoing on the part of his firm in the Petrobras case. 
 
 Mr Varela has been quoted in Panamanian media as saying that he is still in touch with Mr Fonseca, calling him a "friend". 
 
 "At difficult times friends do not run away, they are there," Mr Varela said. 
 
 Mossack Fonseca has accused media organisations reporting the leak of having "unauthorised access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company" and of presenting this information out of context. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mossack Fonseca says it has never been charged with any wrong-doing 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Fonseca said the "only crime" that had been committed was the hack of his firm's servers 
 
 The revelations have already sparked political reaction in several countries where high-profile figures have been implicated. 
 
 On Tuesday Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson stepped down after the documents showed he owned an offshore company with his wife but had not declared it when he entered parliament. 
 
 The ruling coalition has named Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as the new prime minister, with early elections to be held in the autumn. 
 
 Mr Gunnlaugsson says he sold his shares to his wife and denies any wrongdoing. 
 
 More on the Panama Papers 
 
 Panama Papers - tax havens of the rich and powerful exposed 
 
 Eleven million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca have been passed to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which then shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. BBC Panorama and UK newspaper The Guardian are among 107 media organisations in 76 countries which have been analysing the documents. The BBC does not know the identity of the source 
 
 They show how the company has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax 
 
 Mossack Fonseca says it has operated beyond reproach for 40 years and never been accused or charged with criminal wrongdoing 
 
 Tricks of the trade: How assets are hidden and taxes evaded 
 
 Panama Papers: Full coverage; follow reaction on Twitter using #PanamaPapers; in the BBC News app, follow the tag "Panama Papers" 
 
 Watch Panorama on the BBC iPlayer (UK viewers only) 
 
 Are you in Panama? What is your reaction to the Panama Papers scandal? Send us your views and reaction. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk. 
 
 Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways: ||||| PANAMA CITY (AP) — Rich and influential people around the globe have found themselves under siege since a major data leak revealed their ties to secretive financial accounts and shell companies in low-tax havens used to hide wealth. 
 
 The uproar has brought down the prime minister of Iceland and raised questions about the presidents of Argentina and Ukraine, senior Chinese politicians, and the circle of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest politician ensnared when he acknowledged having profited from his father's investments in an offshore tax haven before being elected. 
 
 Yet few American names have cropped up in the "Panama Papers," a trove of 11.5 million confidential records detailing such accounts. That's because the Panama-based Mossack Fonseca law firm at the center of the scandal doesn't like taking on American clients, one of its founders says. 
 
 Ramon Fonseca, who started the firm with Jurgen Mossack, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that their law firm has only a handful of American clients, most of them members of Panama's burgeoning expat retirement community. It's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the Internal Revenue Service. 
 
 "My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market," Fonseca said at his law office. 
 
 "He loves the U.S. a lot, and I do, too. My kids were educated there," Fonseca added. But "as a policy we prefer not to have American clients." 
 
 Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that first obtained the documents, said the records include copies of the passports of 200 Americans and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies have listed addresses in the U.S. That's a tiny fraction of the more than 250,000 companies Mossack Fonseca has set up for clients in four decades of business. 
 
 One reason for the dearth of American clients may be because such companies can be easily created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware and Nevada, attracting less attention than they might in Panama, a country with a reputation for shady financial deals and money laundering. 
 
 Europe is also home to countries that provide banking secrecy that could provide haven from taxes, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Andorra. 
 
 Many Panamanians point to those activities in wealthy countries and say they are angry over what they consider a double standard behind criticism of Panama. 
 
 On Thursday, a European Union official threatened sanctions on Panama and other nations if they don't cooperate fully to fight money laundering and tax evasion. 
 
 "People are fed up with these outrages," said Pierre Moscovici, who heads financial affairs for the 28-nation EU. "The amounts of money, the jurisdictions and the names associated with this affair are frankly shocking." 
 
 Panama is listed by the EU as a country that is not cooperative on tax issues, and Moscovici urged the country to "rethink its position in this regard." 
 
 Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has said his government will cooperate more and announced plans for an international committee of experts to recommend ways to boost transparency. But he also vows to defend his country against what he says are media attacks that unfairly stigmatize Panama. 
 
 In Britain, the prime minister could become the next European politician to find himself under attack. After four days fending off headlines about his family's finances, he acknowledged Thursday that he and his wife, Samantha, sold shares worth 31,500 pounds (currently $44,300) in an offshore fund named Blairmore Holdings in January 2010 — five months before Cameron became prime minister. They had paid 12,497 pounds for the shares in 1997. 
 
 Cameron's father, Ian Cameron, an affluent stockbroker who died in 2010, was a client of Mossack Fonseca. There's no indication the offshore fund was set up to avoid taxes but the revelation reinforced the prime minister's image as a scion of wealth and undermined calls to boost transparency at a time many British overseas territories act as tax havens. 
 
 Also on Thursday, an Argentine prosecutor asked a judge to authorize an investigation into President Mauricio Macri's role in two offshore companies. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, denied having any links to offshore accounts and described the document leaks as part of a U.S.-led plot to weaken Russia even though his name doesn't appear in any of the leaked records. 
 
 "They are trying to destabilize us from within in order to make us more compliant," he said Thursday at a forum in St. Petersburg. 
 
 The Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped coordinate reporting on the leak, said the documents indicate Russian cellist Sergei Roldugin acted as a front man for a network of Putin loyalists and, perhaps, the president himself. 
 
 Fonseca said his firm creates about 20,000 shell companies annually but also rejects about 70 to 80 clients every year due to conflicts that arise during due diligence. 
 
 "We're not perfect and some surely escape by," he said. "But so far the only crime that has been proven is the hack." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Juan Zamorano reported this story in Panama City and AP writer Joshua Goodman reported from Bogota, Colombia. ||||| A man holds a banner which reads,"Panama Leaks, People Racketeer Enough"during a gathering on the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. A few hundred protesters have been... (Associated Press) 
 
 A man holds a banner which reads,"Panama Leaks, People Racketeer Enough"during a gathering on the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, Wednesday, April 6, 2016. A few hundred protesters have been camping out, holding night-time demonstrations since last week at a symbolic rallying point on the Place... (Associated Press) 
 
 BERLIN (AP) — The German newspaper that first obtained the so-called Panama Papers, a vast trove of documents on offshore companies, said Thursday that it won't publish all the files, arguing that not all are of public interest. 
 
 Sueddeutsche Zeitung received the documents from an unidentified source more than a year ago and shared at least parts of them with dozens of other media outlets around the world. Since the first reports were published Sunday, prominent politicians, celebrities and businesspeople have had their offshore business dealings dragged into the spotlight, prompting a flurry of public outrage, official investigations and fierce denials from some of those named. 
 
 Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the complete set of 11.5 million documents "won't be made available to the public or to law enforcement agencies. That's because the SZ isn't the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators." 
 
 Authorities have legal powers to obtain such documents from those suspected of wrongdoing, and in many cases there's no public interest in revealing companies' or individuals' offshore business dealings, the Munich-based paper said. 
 
 The documents relate to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps create shell companies for the world's rich and famous. The firm said it has filed a criminal complaint alleging that the data was stolen in a hacking attack. 
 
 Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it didn't know how the anonymous source obtained the data, but that he or she had expressed "a very strong moral impulse" and wanted to make "these crimes public." 
 
 Panama's government on Wednesday accused wealthy nations of unfairly attacking the Central American country while ignoring their own failings. 
 
 President Juan Carlos Varela said an international committee of experts would be created to recommend ways to boost transparency in the Central American country's offshore financial industry. Experts say that while offshore companies can be used for tax evasion and money laundering, there are also legitimate and legal grounds for creating them. 
 
 German lawmakers said Thursday they plan to hold an urgent debate on the offshore leaks next week. 
 
 "The revelations in the Panama Papers have triggered a broad discussion among politicians and the public about necessary consequences," said Christine Lambrecht, a lawmaker for the Social Democratic Party that is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition. 
 
 Responding to readers' queries about the absence of prominent German or American politicians in the reports, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said such names haven't yet been found in the documents. 
 
 It said the documents include copies of the passports of 200 Americans, and about 3,500 shareholders in offshore companies listed addresses in the United States. 
 
 "One possible reason why comparatively few Americans appear in the documents could be that U.S. citizens have no reason to contact a law firm in Panama," the paper said. "That's because offshore companies can easily be created in U.S. states such as Wyoming, Delaware or Nevada."
– The newspaper that first received the Panama Papers says it isn't going to release all 11.5 million files it received from a whistleblower to the public or to law enforcement—because it "isn't the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators." Sueddeutsche Zeitung has shared files relating to celebrities and politicians, but the German paper doesn't believe there's public interest in exposing all of the individuals and companies involved, the AP reports. The paper says it was contacted by a source at Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca who felt a "very strong moral impulse" to expose the tax evasion and money laundering the firm facilitated with its creation of thousands of offshore shell companies. In other coverage: Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, apparently unhappy with his country's name appearing in headlines about financial crimes all over the world, has promised to boost transparency and clean up the industry, the BBC reports. He says the country will bring in international experts to recommend changes. The Guardian looks at how the scandal has exposed China's "red nobility"—wealthy families connected to the Communist Party. Prominent figures named in the papers include the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping. Unsurprisingly, the scandal is not being reported in China, and censors have been trying to scrub every mention of it from social media. The CBC looks at how the wealth revealed in the leak is just a fraction of what an analyst calls "absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money" tied up in offshore funds. Estimates run as high as $31 trillion, or 13% of global wealth, much of which is being kept in offshore funds to cheat governments out of tax revenue—or to hide the plunder of national resources. The New York Times looks at the history of the Mossack Fonseca firm and its role in Panama's economy. Co-founder Ramon Fonseca had been trying to expand his role in the country's government, claiming he wanted to improve the nation's human rights record. At the Atlantic, Brooke Harrington examines the legal issues involved and concludes that the real scandal isn't the law-breaking—it's that so much of what Mossack Fonseca did was perfectly legal.