In an interview with Reuters, Mr Fonseca said Mossack Fonseca had suffered a successful but limited phone hack, commenting: ‘We believe there's an international campaign against privacy.’

He described privacy as a ‘sacred human right’ and added that his firm ‘will continue working so that legal privacy can work.’

German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung said it received over 11 million leaked documents from the law firm’s database and shared them with more than 100 other news outlets, as well as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Mr Fonseca, who specialised in setting up offshore companies, said that the majority of the 240,000 companies formed by the firm were legitimate, but that Mossack Fonseca isn’t responsible for the activities of the companies it incorporates.

‘We're dedicated to making legal structures which we sell to intermediaries such as banks, lawyers, accountants and trusts, and they have their end-customers that we don't know,’ he said.

In a separate statement published by The Guardian, Mossack Fonseca said: ‘It appears that you have had unauthorized access to proprietary documents and information taken from our company and have presented and interpreted them out of context.'

Panama’s government said in a statement that it would cooperate with any eventual judicial proceeding.