Welcoming the “Pandora Papers” Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed to “investigate” and “take appropriate actions” against Pakistanis mentioned in the Pandora Papers leaks, after members of his inner circle were named in the report.
“We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial ‘havens,'” Khan said in a long Twitter thread on Sunday, after the ICIJ made the investigative report public.
The premier said his government will investigate all the Pakistani citizens names in the Pandora Papers and “if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action.”
The UN SG’s Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI) calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets laundered to largely offshore tax-havens.
Khan urged the international community to take strict actions against this type of money laundering and demanded “to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis.”
Khan slams wealthy countries for their silence over looted money
Imran Khan also slammed rich countries for their lack of interest in stopping this “large-scale plunder and repatriating the looted money.”
“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.
Names of Pakistanis in leaks
According to the latest investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), more than 700 Pakistani citizens, including notable members of incumbent government, donors to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and family members of several high-ranking military officials moved millions of dollars of wealth out of country through offshore companies.
Some prominent names in the leaks include:
- Water Resources Minister Moonis Elahi, and
- Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin
- Former water resources minister, Faisal Vawda
- Arif Naqvi and Tariq Shafi (donors of PTI)
- Major-General (Rtd.) Nusrat Naeem
- Lt Col (Rtd.) Raja Nadir Pervez
What are Pandora papers?
Pandora Papers Leaks – involving around 600 journalists from different print media houses including The Washington Post, the BBC and The Guardian – is based on the leak of about 11.9 million documents from 14 financial services companies around the world.
About 35 current and former leaders from across the world are featured in the documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and face allegations ranging from corruption to money laundering and global tax avoidance.