Earlier yesterday, the ICIJ published the first of the new “Pandora Papers” leak on the alleged financial secrets of more than 35 current and former world leaders as well as more than 330 politicians and officials from across the globe.

Bernama quoted an ICIJ spokesman as saying in Washington: “We intend to continue to publish based on the documents.

“We intend to publish in the next few days and months and possibly years to come. Well, it’s 12 million documents, so I’m sure more stories will come.”

The spokesman told Sputnik, the Russian news agency, that ICIJ was also open to the idea that new prominent names might emerge over the course of the investigation.

“It depends on what we’ll discover. What I can tell you is that it’s taken us two years to find the 35 that we have. We may discover more but we don’t know (when).”

Bernama said the ICIJ called the just-published “Pandora Papers” its “most expansive exposé of financial secrecy yet”, noting that the investigation involved more than 600 journalists from 117 countries.

It came five years after the ICIJ published the Panama Papers, which cited documents allegedly belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to assert that some national leaders and their confidants used offshore banking to conceal their fortunes.

The authenticity of the data has never been confirmed, with Mossack Fonseca refusing to do so and accusing the journalists of having committed a crime.