Islamabad: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has pledged to “investigate” Pakistani citizens connected to a massive probe into the hidden wealth of politicians worldwide.
The trove of documents, known as the Pandora Papers, reveal that some of the key members of Khan’s inner circle, including cabinet ministers, their families and major financial supporters, have secretly owned companies holding millions of dollars of hidden wealth. The 11.9 million documents reveal hidden wealth, tax avoidance and money laundering by some of the world’s rich and powerful.
“We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion and corruption and laundered out to financial ‘havens,” Khan said on Twitter on Sunday night. The UN SG’s Panel FACTI calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens, he recalled.
Khan, who has led a massive anti-corruption movement in Pakistan, has promised to investigate every citizen mentioned in the records. Khan said his government will investigate “all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers and if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action” while calling on the international community “to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis.”
Tax havens fuelling inequality and poverty
Khan came to power in 2018 on an anti-graft platform, promising a renewed political system by rooting corruption out, eradicating poverty and improving the country’s economy. “My over-two decades struggle has been premised on the belief that countries are not poor but corruption causes poverty because money is diverted from being invested in our people. Also, this resource theft causes devaluation, leading to thousands of poverty-related deaths,” Khan said.
He said that global poverty levels were fuelled by corruption in tax havens. “If unchecked, inequalities between rich and poor states will increase as poverty rises” which will in turn “lead to a flood of economic migration from the poor to the rich states, causing further economic and social instability across the globe.”
He also slammed wealthy countries for not being “interested in preventing this large-scale plunder nor in repatriating this looted money” saying the ruling elites of the developing world are plundering wealth the same way East India Company did.
Pakistanis named in Pandora Papers
Some 700 Pakistanis are reportedly listed in the Pandora Papers published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Senator Faisal Vawda, the brother of Minister for Industries Khusro Bakhtiar, Minister of water resources and PML-Q leader Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, son of PML-N’s Ishaq Dar, PPP’s Sharjeel Memon, PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan and Axact CEO Shoaib Sheikh, are some of the prominent Pakistanis with alleged links to offshore companies. Some former military leaders and their relatives have also been named in the papers.
Some 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials in 91 countries are featured in the files from offshore companies, facing allegations ranging from corruption to money laundering and global tax avoidance.
The Pandora Papers are the latest in a series of ICIJ leaks of financial documents from the 2016 Panama Papers to FinCen files in 2020. Pakistan’s three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted by the country’s Supreme Court in 2017 over allegations made in the Panama Papers.
