FORMER British ambassador Craig Murray accused “corporate media” groups of hiding important information from their coverage of the Panama Papers yesterday.

The one-time ambassador to Uzbekistan suggested that the groups with access to the Mossack Fonseca leak, such as the Guardian and the BBC, would focus their coverage on countries other than Britain.

“They are protecting themselves from even seeing Western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters,” Mr Murray wrote on his blog.

“Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.”

He added: “What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists?

“What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC?” Besides the two British media groups, documents from the offshore specialised legal firm were shared with the German Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The ICIJ’s largest funder is the US-based Centre for Public Integrity, which in turn is sponsored by billionaire trusts such as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the W K Kellogg Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment.

According to Mr Murray, an investigation into companies listed on every Western stock exchange might have been “much more interesting” than the revelations on Russian corruption.

“What if you look at things that we might, here in the West, be able to rise up and do something about?”

The BBC told the Star that coverage of the leaks was far from over and more British individuals were to be exposed during their Panorama programme aired last night.