Who cares if the Panama Papers were planted?

LAST week, a respected Russia scholar in the US speculated that the Kremlin might be behind the so-called Panama Papers, the big dump of data about offshore accounts that has implicated several countries’ officials in shady dealings. And last Thursday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia blamed the United States for the leak.

So far, the Panama Papers have caused the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister (whose wife owned some bank debt that the government was trying to restructure) and Spain’s industry minister (who had denied, falsely, that he’d had any offshore dealings). There probably will be further fallout: The millions of documents haven’t been fully investigated. Still, it’s probably safe to say that there will be no resignations, firings or criminal inquiries in Russia.