Worker at Panama Papers Law Firm Arrested in Geneva

An IT worker at Mossack Fonseca — the offshore law firm at the center of the Panama Papers — has been arrested in Geneva as part of an effort to trace the document leak.

The law firm accused the IT worker of information theft and breach of trust. That worker has not been publicly identified, the Guardian reported.

It was a person under the alias John Doe who offered the internal files from the law firm to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung last year. But the newspaper said the person who was arrested is not John Doe.

A lawyer for Mossack Fonseca said data were taken from the worker’s computer.

“It’s on this basis that we have filed a complaint for data theft and breach of the law firm’s trust,” the lawyer, Thierry Ulmann, said, according to the Guardian. “Very detailed investigations are being undertaken by Geneva police to analyse the digital traces and shed light on this theft of data.”

The worker’s lawyers have denied all accusations, the Guardian reported.