For more discerning viewers, the sensationalist speculations had the hallmark features of another wild-eyed smear-job. All hype and no substance, just as in many other previous attempts by the Western media to blacken the Russian leader's reputation -- based on nothing else but prejudice and innuendo. Recall the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 and Putin's "gunslinger walk" as but two such tawdry episodes.
Despite the convoluted hype, the Russian leader was not even named in the latest files leaked from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack-Fonseca. The firm specializes in setting up shell companies for rich clients in overseas jurisdictions, thus helping these clients evade tax in their home countries.
Western media outlets predictably leapt to racy implications about Putin because, among the thousands of clients named, some apparently had a personal friendship with the Russian president. The Kremlin dismissed the speculation of financial impropriety as "more fibs" that the Western media periodically indulges in in order to smear Putin.
Turns out, however, that the seeming attempt at smear has gone awry, and instead has backfired badly, with gooey egg running off the face of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Those territories include British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. In this way, Britain's rich elite, banks and other corporations could save billions of pounds from paying taxes to the British government.
Amazingly, perhaps, these rich men's financial tricks are not considered illegal by the authorities. Although, most people would at least discern them to be unethical practice.
Premier David Cameron this week denied having any shares or trusts in overseas tax havens, and he claimed that his sole assets included his salary, savings and a family home. However, Cameron has been coy about answering directly the issue of whether he may have benefited from his father's wheeling and dealing.
When Cameron's father, Ian, died in 2010, his personal estate was reportedly valued to be the equivalent of $5 million, of which his son inherited $500,000. It was the same year that David Cameron was elected prime minister as leader of the Conservative Party.
Thus, it would seem self-evident that the British prime minister has indeed gained from the proceeds of tax avoidance through his late father's legacy. While strictly not illegal, nevertheless such a connection has politically foul whiff about it.
This scandal is not only confined to the occupant of 10 Downing Street. Several other senior members of his own party, including former ministers, have been named in the Panama Papers as patrons of tax-dodging shell companies.
What is amusing in all this is that yet another lame bid to slander the Russian president has ended up boomeranging on the heads of Western governments, and Britain in particular.
Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson has been forced out of office by widespread public anger over his involvement in alleged financial misconduct. Some 70 other world leaders and high public officials have also been singled out in the Panama Papers as having holdings in offshore firms.
With over 11 million files having been leaked, the financial dirt is bound to keep on mounting for weeks to come.
The heat is certainly growing under the feet of Britain's David Cameron and others members of his Tory government.
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