Prime Minister Imran Khan who had come under attack earlier this month after the Pandora Papers revealed that his close aides had stashed money in secret bank accounts in various tax havens abroad has now come under fire for selling gifts he received from other heads of state which include a luxury watch worth USD 1 million.
Gifts are routinely exchanged between heads of states or officers holding constitutional positions during a state visit. According to the gift depository (Toshakhana) rules, these gifts remain the property of the state unless sold at an open auction. Rules allow officials to retain gifts with a market value of less than ₹10,000 without paying anything, Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune has reported.
Following the expose, opposition leaders have stepped up their attack on the Prime Minister.
"Imran Khan has sold the gifts he received from other countries," PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz tweeted in Urdu.
"Caliph Hazrat Omar (companion of Prophet Muhammad) was accountable for his shirt and robe and you (Imran Khan), on the other hand, looted foreign gifts from Toshakhana and you are talking of setting up a state of Madina? How can a person be this insensitive, deaf, dumb and blind?" remarked the daughter of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Opposition alliance — Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) — president Maulana Fazlur Rehman said there are reports that prime minister Khan has sold a precious watch he received from a prince. "This is shameful," he said.
Pakistani social media has been flooded with reports that Khan was gifted an expensive watch by the prince of a Gulf country. The watch was allegedly sold in Dubai by a close aide of Khan's and $1 million was passed on to the prime minister as the proceeds of the sale. The prince reportedly knows that the watch gifted to Khan has been sold.
Earlier this month, in a major embarrassment for Imran Khan, members of his inner circle, including cabinet ministers and their families, had been found to secretly own companies and trusts holding millions of dollars in tax havens abroad, in an investigation carried out by the international consortium of investigative journalists (ICIJ).
Among those whose secret foreign accounts 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.
