Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiatul Ulema Islam (JUI-F), an ally of Nawaz Sharif, said the prime minister should address the issue in two ways: clear names of his sons if questions raised in the leaked papers were incorrect.
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Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered on Tuesday a judicial investigation into the Panama Papers allegations of the Sharif family’s ownership of offshore companies and assets.
He said the commission would weigh all the allegations and give its verdict after due investigation.
Addressing the nation, Sharif announced formation of the commission to probe allegations against him and his family.
Ian Cameron’s name is allegedly in the over 11 million leaked documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca that were passed to German newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with 107 media organisations. He maintained that he never used his government office for financial gain. Mossack Fonseca knew that Mariam Safdar was Nawaz Sharif’s daughter, a “Politically Exposed Person”, and committed to checking her activities twice a year beginning in July 2012.
Mian Nawaz Sharif said his family business has been providing job opportunities to thousands of people besides contributing hugely to the national exchequer in the form of taxes and duties.
A massive leak of 2.6 terabytes of data has suddenly thrown light on the murky world of offshore banking, where the world’s richest (and shadiest) tend to park their cash to avoid paying taxes or being detected.
Sharif said Hasan had lived in London since 1994 and Hussain in Saudi Arabia since 2000, where both run businesses-and emphasized that all their business dealings were in line with the laws and regulations of those countries.
Pervaiz Rashid, Pakistan’s information minister and a close aide to Sharif, said the premier’s children filed tax returns in accordance with Pakistani laws “and do business overseas like children of common Pakistanis do”.
And he issued one final dig at Khan, calling on him to provide “proof that the Prime Minister has not declared his assets”.
When the Panama Papers were first released, Mr Sharif’s son Hussain Nawaz Sharif denied the allegations, saying his family had done “nothing wrong”.
“But now Hussain Nawaz comes on TV and accepts that Maryam owns two offshore companies”. The OCCRP said the law firm also incorporated companies named Blofeld and Spectre, after the classic Bond villain and his organization.
In reaction to opposition’s criticism on PM, a senior ruling party lawmaker, Danyal Aziz, accused Imran Khan of investing funds collected for Shaukat Khanam Memorial Hospital (SKMH) in offshore companies.
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According to BBC, these capitalist fairytale lands usually include the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Panama.
