| Names of Shaukat Tarin, Moonis Elahi, son of former PM’s adviser Waqar Masood Khan, top PTI donor Arif Naqvi, Faisal Vawda, Aleem Khan, son of Ishaq Dar, Sharjeel Memon and brother of Industries Minister Khusro Bakhtiar are revealed
Country’s political, military elites hid millions offshore,
reveals investigation
LAHORE/WASHINGTON – At least 700 Pakistanis including some influential people working on key positions are among than a dozen heads of state and government, including the King of Jordan and the Czech prime minister, who amassed millions in secret offshore assets, according to an investigation published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
The so-called “Pandora Papers” investigation — involving some 600 journalists from dozens of media including The Washington Post and The Guardian — is based on the leak of some 11.9 million documents from 14 financial services companies around the world. Some members of the inner circle of Prime Minister Imran Khan who had promised ‘new Pakistan’ also secretly moved millions offshore. The leaked files show a key ally tried to bypass tax authorities and political and military elites bought luxury apartments and set up shell companies.
In a series of tweets following the disclosures, PM Imran Khan welcomed the Pandora Papers and pledged full investigations against all those Pakistanis named in the files. “My govt will investigate all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers & if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action. I call on the international community to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis,” tweets
PM Imran Khan.
“We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial “havens”. The UN SG’s Panel FACTI calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens.”
“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.” PM Imran Khan also tweeted, “Just like the East India Company plundered the wealth of India, ruling elites of developing world are doing the same. Unfortunately, the rich states are neither interested in preventing this large-scale plunder nor in repatriating this looted money.”
“If unchecked, inequalities between rich & poor states will increase as poverty rises in the latter. This in turn will lead to a flood of economic migration from the poor to the rich states, causing further economic & social instability across the globe.”
Now leaked documents reveal that key members of Khan’s inner circle, including cabinet ministers, their families and major financial backers have secretly owned an array of companies and trusts holding millions of dollars of hidden wealth. Military leaders have been implicated as well. The documents contain no suggestion that Khan himself owns offshore companies.
Among those whose holdings have been exposed are Khan’s finance minister, Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, and his family, and the son of Khan’s former adviser for finance and revenue, Waqar Masood Khan. The records also reveal the offshore dealings of a top PTI donor, Arif Naqvi, who is facing fraud charges in the United States.
The files show how Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, a key political ally of Imran Khan’s, planned to put the proceeds from an allegedly corrupt business deal into a secret trust, concealing them from Pakistan’s tax authorities. Elahi did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment. Today, a family spokesman told ICIJ’s media partners that, “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons.” He added that the family’s assets “are declared as per applicable law”.
In one of several offshore holdings involving military leaders and their families, a luxury London apartment was transferred from the son of a famous Indian movie director to the wife of a three-star general. The general told ICIJ the property purchase was disclosed and proper; his wife didn’t reply.
The revelations are part of the Pandora Papers, a new global investigation into the shadowy offshore financial system that allows multinational corporations, the rich, famous and powerful to avoid taxes and otherwise shield their wealth. The probe is based on more than 11.9 million confidential files from 14 offshore services firms leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with 150 news organizations around the world.
The Pandora Papers investigation exposes civilian government and military leaders who have been hiding vast amounts of wealth in a country plagued by widespread poverty and tax avoidance.
The newly leaked records reveal the use of offshore services by Pakistan’s elites that rivals the findings of the Panama Papers, which led to Sharif’s downfall and helped propel Imran Khan to power three years ago. Today, a few hours before the Pandora Papers’ publication, Khan’s spokesperson told a press conference that the prime minister, “has no offshore company but if any of his ministers [or] advisers have it will be their individual acts and they will have to be held accountable.”
Shaukat Tarin, Khan’s finance minister, and members of Tarin’s family, own four offshore companies. According to Tariq Fawad Malik, a financial consultant who handled the paperwork on the companies, they were set up as part of the Tarin family’s intended investment in a bank with a Saudi business. He said that, “as a mandatory prerequisite by [the] regulator, we engaged with the Central Bank of Pakistan to obtain their ’in-principle’ approval for the said strategic investment.” The deal didn’t proceed.
Tarin didn’t respond to ICIJ’s questions. In a statement issued the day of the Pandora Papers’ publication, Tarin said: “The off-shore companies mentioned were incorporated as part of the fund raising process for my Bank.”
Omer Bakhtyar, the brother of Khan’s minister for industries, Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar, transferred a $1 million apartment in the Chelsea area of London to his elderly mother through an offshore company in 2018. The state anti-corruption agency has been investigating allegations that his family’s wealth inexplicably “ballooned” since Bhaktyar first became a minister in Pervez Musharaff’s government in 2004.
In a written statement to ICIJ, Makhdum Bakhtyar said that the anti-corruption agency’s investigation was founded on baseless allegations which had underestimated his family’s past wealth, and that it has so far not resulted in a formal complaint.
The son of Waqar Masood Khan, Khan’s chief adviser for finance and revenue between 2019 and 2020, co-owned a company based in the British Virgin Islands. Masood resigned in August amid a policy dispute. Khan told ICIJ that he did not know what his son’s company did. He said his son lived a modest life, and was not his financial dependent.
And Khan’s former minister for water resources, Faisal Vawda, set up an offshore company in 2012 to invest in U.K. properties, the Pandora Papers show. He resigned in March amid a controversy over his status as a dual U.S.-Pakistan national. Vawda told ICIJ that he has declared all worldwide assets held in his name to Pakistani tax authorities.
Riding a wave of public outrage, Khan led protests around the country and a sit-in at the residence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, demanding that he step down. PM Khan propelled his reformist party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, past its rivals in the 2018 national elections and propelled himself into the prime minister’s office in Islamabad.
In a televised victory speech, Khan promised a new era.
“We will establish supremacy of the law,” he said. “Whoever violates the law, we will act against them. Our state institutions will be so strong that they will stop corruption. Accountability will start with me, then my ministers, and then it will go from there.”