ISLAMABAD: The Pandora Papers, an investigation uncovering financial secrets held by high-profile individuals across the world, includes the names of more than 700 Pakistanis, it emerged on Sunday.
Most prominently these include Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi, Senator Faisal Vawda, Ishaq Dar’s son, PPP’s Sharjeel Memon, the family of Minister for Industries and Production Khusro Bakhtiar, PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan, among others, with alleged links to offshore companies.
Some retired army officials, businessmen — including Axact’s CEO Shoaib Sheikh — and media company owners, have also been named in the leaks.
According to an’ investigative reporter Umar Cheema, who was part of the probe, along with Fakhar Durrani, spoke to a private news channel regarding the findings.
He said that it was overall a very time-consuming process which tested everyone’s patience. In this time, they pored over every word contained in the documents, checked the background of the people listed, their dealings in Pakistan and abroad. “We tried our best for there to be no injustice […] no case of mistaken identity.”
Detailing the difficulties encountered in contacting the people named in the investigation Cheema said that written questions were first sent. Some were contacted by phone, who would hang up when told what the probe is about, some refused to give their email addresses, others were also contacted through WhatsApp.
It must be noted that establishing and declaring an offshore company, which is not involved in any illegal practices, is permissible by law.
Speaking of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Lahore residence, 2 Zaman Park, he said that International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the non-profit newsroom and journalist network based in Washington DC which organised the investigation, sent questions to the PM’s spokesperson.
And our thought was that it must not be so that it is his address. There must be two or three addresses. But the way they wanted to preempt the news, and then run statements of clarification, I do not understand what the need for this was. Such behaviour arouses suspicion,” Cheema said.
The investigative journalist, for the ease of viewers, also spoke of the matter of declaring offshore companies. He said that whether it is a public office holder, or an ordinary citizen, offshore companies do need to be declared while filing tax returns and must also be declared with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan.
The probe
ICIJ received more than 11.9 million documents containing 2.94 terabytes worth of confidential information from service providers who helped set up and manage offshore companies and trusts in tax havens around the world.
The ICIJ shared the data with 150 media organisations and has led the broadest collaboration in journalism history. It took the ICIJ almost two years to organise the investigation that involved more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, making it the biggest-ever journalism partnership.
By comparison, for the Panama Papers, almost 400 journalists from 80 countries participated in the investigation.
The News was the only ICIJ partner from Pakistan on both occasions. In addition, The News also partnered with the ICIJ in the Bahamas leak and the Paradise Papers.
The Pandora Papers leak will uncover financial secrets of more leaders and public officials than the Panama Papers did and provide more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies, reports suggest.
The Panama Papers were based on the data of a Panama-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca that revealed offshore holdings of 140 politicians, public offshore and sports stars. Those documents were obtained by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which contained records dating back 40 years.
The Pandora Papers investigation is bigger in size and revelations about politicians and public officials are also far more than what previously came to public attention.
From Pakistan, there were more than 400 individuals who surfaced in the Panama Papers.
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