Pakistan judge’s wife says agencies illegally giving out her tax details
Sarina Isa alleges certain quarters were given access to her bank accounts
Islamabad: The wife of Pakistan’s Supreme Court judge Qazi Faez Isa, Sarina Isa, has alleged that the country’s top tax collecting authority Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has given illegal access of her tax information and protected bank accounts to certain quarters that are probing money trail and her various sources of income.
In a detailed reply to FBR allegations about concealing her offshore properties, Sarina Isa said she wondered if the tax authorities wanted her to redefine her life and explain every rupee earned by her since she started working in Karachi American School some four decades back.
Sarina Isa has been receiving show cause notices by the FBR for provision of her offshore properties’ details and a case was also filed against her husband in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) on the basis of the ‘clandestine’ properties of his wife and children.
The Supreme Court of the country, however, dismissed that case in June this year declaring it null and void. But, at the same time, the apex court ordered the FBR to provide conclusive findings on Sarina Isa and her two children’s London properties.
The tax authorities insist she had concealed her London properties and an amount of Rs10 million (Dh502,293) was yet to be explained besides her sources of income.
On the other hand, Sarina Isa in her reply held she didn’t know where the FBR authorities have taken the figure of Rs10 million from. FBR is of the view that she could not have saved such a huge amount of money enough to justify the purchase of three properties in London, one for £236,000 in the year 2004 and two in the year 2013 for £245,000 and £270,000 respectively.
Sarina Isa has maintained that she has provided them with all the relevant records of her sources of income and money trail.