The Kremlin has dismissed revelations contained in the Panama Papers as “Putinphobia” and said that journalists investigating the Russian president’s financial affairs had “found out little new”.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said on Monday that the publication of leaked offshore files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca was designed to “destabilise the situation in Russia ahead of elections”.



“It’s clear that the level of Putinphobia has reached a level at which it is impossible a priori to speak well of Russia, and it’s required to speak ill of Russia,” he said. He also denied his wife had been the beneficial owner of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Speaking in Moscow, Peskov insisted to reporters: “My wife does not and has never owned any offshore companies. Based on this I am inclined to doubt the authenticity of other claims.”

But the Guardian can reveal that Peskov’s wife, Tatiana Navka, a former Olympic ice skater, was the registered beneficial owner of a secret offshore firm. Documents from the Panama Papers show that Navka set up the company, Carina Global Assets Ltd, in 2014. She used agents in the Isle of Man who wrote in emails that the company was to be used for investments.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Image of Tatiana Navka’s passport, which was included in the Panama Papers leak.

The couple got together in 2012 after Peskov became estranged from his previous wife. They married last year in a lavish ceremony in Sochi and were criticised for allegedly honeymooning on the world’s second most expensive yacht, the Maltese Falcon.

Campaigners noticed that Peskov’s watch – a limited edition Swiss time piece with a skull – was worth £400,000, almost four times his Kremlin salary. Peskov said the watch was a gift from his new wife.



Last week Navka denied that she had had an offshore company. She told reporters from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project: “I’ve never had any offshore companies or accounts. I don’t know who could have done it. I would like myself to understand what happened.”



The leaked files, however, include a copy of Navka’s Russian passport. To register her company she also provided six months’ worth of utility bills, from April, August, September, October, November and December 2013, with her home address in Moscow. They are stamped by the “VIP private banking” department of the Bank of Moscow.



A British firm on the Isle of Man, Bridgewaters, administered Navka’s company. The Panama Papers reveal the firm has numerous wealthy Russian clients, including the Arsenal FC shareholder Alisher Usmanov.

Bridgewaters provided two of its employees to Navka as nominee directors, Brett Armitage and Stephen Corran. There is no suggestion the pair were involved in wrongdoing. This added a layer of impenetrable secrecy meaning that Navka’s beneficial ownership would not appear on public registers.



But her name surfaces in private emails swapped between Mossack Fonseca and Bridgewater, which held a copy of her passport.



In February 2014 Mossack Fonseca’s local agent on the Isle of Man asked Bridgewater to give more detail about Navka’s new company. The agent wrote: “I wondered if you had an update on the certified passport copy for Tatiana Navka? Also we need more information on the type of activity of the company. You’ve listed ‘investments’, but we need to know exactly what this case covers.”



Bridgewater wrote back to say that the offshore company did not need a special licence under BVI law. It added: “Please be advised the company will purchase investments on behalf of the beneficial owner.”



Carina Global Assets Ltd was successfully registered on 20 February 2014. It was wound up in October 2015. At that moment international journalists were intensively investigating the private assets of Putin’s inner circle, and his cellist best friend Sergei Roldugin.



On Monday Peskov said the president was still friends with Roldugin, who is linked to a $2bn trail of loans and offshore deals. Roldugin has known Putin since 1977, and is godfather to his daughter Maria. “Roldugin and many other people from the widest sphere of activities remain Putin’s friends. He has many friends in Russia and abroad,” Peskov said.

Sergei Roldugin, the cellist who holds the key to tracing Putin’s hidden fortune Read more

Putin’s spokesman added he believed that the journalistic consortium behind the Panama Papers included “many former state department and CIA employees, as well as those of other intelligence services”.

While Russian anti-corruption activists praised the investigation, some Russians even among the liberal opposition dismissed the claims against Putin’s inner circle as unsurprising and uninteresting.

The political and civil society activist Alena Popova wrote on Facebook: “For a western audience it would be a reason for a politician to resign, but here it isn’t a reason, it’s far from it … Society has become accustomed almost on a genetic level that politicians can steal from our pockets.”

However, opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny said the Panama papers were important for the detail they gave on how the schemes work.

Navalny said: “We knew Putin was corrupt so of course on some overall level this doesn’t change the general perception of Putin, and maybe that’s why some people are dismissing it as not interesting. But it’s useful in that it doesn’t only give us a general idea but gives us a concrete account full of cash, and we can see the whole scheme of how it works and which businessmen are filling up this account.”

Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin Read more

Navalny said some of the Russian banks involved were listed on European stock exchanges and should be subject to punitive measures.

Andrei Kostin, the head of the major state-controlled VTB bank, told Bloomberg that there was nothing inherently surprising about the use of offshore companies, and said the claims of Putin’s involvement were “bullshit”.

“I never read anything related to Mr Putin directly, Mr Putin was never involved, and the fact that his daughter was celebrating wedding in the Igora ski resort which is actually not expensive and used for weddings every week for dozens of people in St Petersburg, I don’t know how it can relate Putin to any offshore businesses,” Kostin said.

The use of offshore companies is entirely legal. Russia’s president, however, has spoken out repeatedly about the need for “deoffshoreisation” and has urged Russians to bring cash hidden abroad home. He first mentioned the theme in 2011, telling business leaders: “We need to bring our assets back here. What are we afraid of? We need to improve the tax system.” His audience laughed. Putin laughed also, but said: “It’s not funny.”



In 2014 Putin signed a bill requiring Russians to pay taxes on their offshore assets. Last June the president offered an amnesty for people who illegally hid their money in offshore accounts, provided the cash was taxed or repatriated.

According to Russian state media about $2tn has left Russia in recent years through offshore schemes.