KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — Umno minister Khairy Jamaluddin today urged Malaysians not to be so quick to vilify those identified in the Panama Papers, pointing out that the names of even world-renowned individuals like football ace Lionel Messi have turned up in the unprecedented data leak.

The Youth and Sports Minister said Malaysians should think more rationally, noting that some of the politicians named were businessmen before they joined politics.

“It is obviously dominating the headlines. So, we will see what happens. Even Lionel Messi is there. Doesn’t automatically implicate anybody in any crime.

“People set up offshore vehicles for many reasons in the course of doing business. Some of these people were in business before they were in politics. We will see what happens,” he told reporters when met outside the Dewan Rakyat lobby today.

“There is a lot of information in there. We don’t know what the full extent of the contents of the paper are,” Khairy added.

The Panama Papers information leak involves over 11.5 million confidential documents created by Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.

The documents provide detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, the names of their shareholders as well as their directors, which include among them government leaders, their close associates and even close relatives.

Among the countries involved are Malaysia, Brazil, China, France, India, Pakistan, the UK, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Russia, Mexico, Argentina and Ukraine.