FRESH demonstrations calling for a new government took place in Iceland yesterday following the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson on Tuesday.

Mr Gunnlaugsson suggested his Progressive Party’s vice-chairman Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as his replacement.

The prime minister’s resignation was prompted by revelations of an offshore company in his name in the so-called Panama Papers released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

It came after President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson refused to call a snap election, despite junior coalition partner the Independence Party declaring that it had no confidence in the PM.

Protesters gathered outside parliament yesterday afternoon in the third consecutive day of demonstrations against the present government.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks spokesman and co-founder of the Icelandic Centre for Investigative Journalism Kristinn Hrafnsson, who has worked with the ICIJ, criticised the organisation’s handling of the leaks.

He called the ICIJ’s refusal to release all the documents, which it had sat on for a year, “irresponsible” and demanded full disclosure.

The ICIJ is funded by a number of corporate bodies, including billionaire anti-communist George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. It has been accused of prioritising searches for Washington’s enemies in the leaked files.

When asked by Russian news agency Tass on Tuesday whether his organisation would be publishing details of US tax-dodgers, ICIJ director Gerard Ryle said: “Unfortunately, we do not have such data.

“We haven’t disclosed the whole database and we’re not going to,” he insisted.

US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders warned as far back as 2011 that wealthy US citizens were stashing their cash in Panamanian bank accounts.