British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted Thursday that he profited from his late father's offshore investment revealed in the Panama Papers leak, according to U.K. newspapers.
Four months before becoming prime minister, David Cameron sold his stake in the fund for $42,000, The Guardian reported.
"I am proud of my dad and what he did, the business he established and all the rest of it," Cameron said, according to the Telegraph. "I can't bear to see his name being dragged through the mud."
Cameron was dragged into the offshore tax haven scandal this week over his late father's connections to an investment fund that avoided paying tax in the United Kingdom by having its directors hold board meetings in Switzerland and the Bahamas rather than London.
Ian Cameron, a stock broker who died in 2010, was one of the people whose name appeared on documents stolen from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and leaked to dozens of media companies around the world.
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The company Ian Cameron set up was called Blairmore.
On Thursday, David Cameron said he and his wife, Samantha, held 5,000 units in the Blairmore Investment Trust from 1997 to January 2010, the Telegraph reported.
Cameron's office initially called the discovery a "private matter."
Downing Street then confirmed that the prime minister does not hold any shares in the company. Cameron then released another statement saying, "In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares. I have a salary as prime minister and I have some savings., which I get interest from and I have a house, which we used to live in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street and that's all I have."
Cameron added: "I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that. And, so that, I think, is a very clear description."
His office added that Cameron, his wife and children do not benefit from any offshore funds.