In a major embarrassment for Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, members of his inner circle, including cabinet ministers and their families, have 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.
The records also reveal the offshore dealings of Arif Naqvi, a top donor to Imran Khan’s party who is also facing fraud charges in the US, according to ICIJ.
Pakistan's civilian government and military leaders have been hiding vast amounts of wealth in a country plagued by widespread poverty and tax avoidance, said ICIJ.
According to the ICIJ, the use of offshore services by the Pakistan leadership rivals the findings of the Panama Papers, which led to Sharif's downfall and helped propel Imran Khan to power three years ago.
The "Pandora Papers" investigation — involving some 600 journalists from media including The Washington Post, the BBC and The Guardian — is based on the leak of some 11.9 million documents from 14 financial services companies around the world.
The document has also revealed many key military leaders of Pakistan and intergenerational wealth transfer.
The findings offer a portrait of an unaccountable military elite with extensive personal and family offshore holdings.
The Pakistan Prime Minister is surrounded with people – cabinet ministers and their families, donors and other political allies – who have holdings hidden offshore, according to ICIJ.
Pakistan's Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin and some members of his family own four offshore companies.
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, as per ICIJ.
Faisal Vawda, Khan''s former minister for water resources set up an offshore company in 2012 to invest in UK properties. He resigned in March amid a controversy over his status as a dual US-Pakistan national. The financial backers of Imran Khan figure prominently in the leaked documents.
Imran Khan tried to put up a brave face and said that he would launch an inquiry into the matter.
The files detail the offshore activities of more than 29,000 accounts. Among them: More than 130 Forbes list billionaires and over 330 public officials around the world.
The Pandora Papers expose the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial "havens".
Some 35 current and former leaders are featured in the documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) — facing allegations ranging from corruption to money laundering and global tax avoidance.
The documents expose how Jordan’s King Abdullah II created a network of offshore companies and tax havens to amass a $100 million property empire from Malibu, California to Washington and London.
The documents also show Czech Prime minister Andrej Babis — facing an election later this week — failed to declare an offshore investment company used to purchase a chateau worth $22 million in the south of France.
In total, the ICIJ found links between almost 1,000 companies in offshore havens and 336 high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.
More than two-thirds of the companies were set up in the British Virgin Islands.
In most countries, the ICIJ stresses, it is not illegal to have assets offshore or to use shell companies to do business across national borders.
But such revelations are no less of an embarrassment for leaders who may have campaigned publicly against corruption, or advocated austerity measures at home.
Also read: IMF urges Pakistan to freeze govt salaries as economy totters
