President Nicos Anastasiades once again denied any wrongdoing after the law firm he founded and bears his name was accused of hiding the assets of a former Russian senator behind fake beneficial owners.

The report in the Guardian newspaper followed a massive leak of financial documents – dubbed the Pandora Papers — that allegedly tie world leaders to secret stores of wealth.

“They say nothing, they are talking about the law firm bearing my name and nothing else,” Anastasiades told reporters upon his arrival at the EU Summit.


The president said there was nothing in the papers about him hiding wealth in the BVIs or setting up a company to transfer money out of Cyprus.

According to the Guardian, a Panamanian offshore company broker, Alcogal, complained that the Cypriot law firm Nicos Chr. Anastasiades & Partners had claimed to it that four of the offshore companies it was managing were beneficially owned by its staff.

However, in the report it filed to financial regulators in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) on June 8, 2015, it said it had come to believe it had been misled, and it now believed the true owner was the Russian businessman Leonid Lebedev.

Anastasiades told the British daily that while he owned shares in the law firm until his election as president in 2013, he had no active role in its affairs after becoming leader of the opposition in 1997.