ISLAMABAD (Staff Report) – Following a worldwide uproar over Panama Papers leak, PTI chief Imran Khan has called a special meeting to chalk out future course of action.
“I have called a meeting of PTI senior leadership to discuss strategy after Panama leaks startling revelations on Sharifs’ offshore accounts,” said Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
The meeting will be held at Khan’s Bani Gala residence in Islamabad on Tuesday, according to sources.
On the other hand, according to media reports, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also called his aides and senior party leaders at the Prime Minister House to devise a strategy to counter the PTI.
Source said the PML-N leadership is bent upon defending the PM and his family and giving a befitting response to PTI’s ‘point scoring’.
Read more: Rana Sanaullah calls Panama Papers ‘satanic leaks’
Imran Khan demands PM’s resignation over Sharif family’s offshore assets, calling for National Accountability Bureau’s investigation into the holdings as well as tax evasions.
The Panama Papers have generated a worldwide controversy over the financial activities of the global elite. Several countries, including India, have launched tax evasion probes after a massive leak of confidential documents lifted the lid on the murky offshore financial dealings of a slew of politicians and celebrities.
List of Pakistani politicians, businessmen and judges who own offshore companies
Reportedly, the leaked documents identify at least 200 Pakistanis, including the family of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the late Benazir Bhutto, Rehman Malik and other prominent politicians and businessmen.
Documents released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reveal that Mariam Safdar, Hasan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz “were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies”.
Mariam Safdar is named as the beneficial owner of off-shore firms Nescoll Limited and Nielsen Enterprises Limited, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 1993 and 1994, respectively.
In legal parlance, the terms ‘off-shore company’ or ‘off-shore corporation’ are used in at least two distinct and different ways. An offshore company may be a reference to: a corporation or any other type of legal entity which is incorporated or registered in an offshore financial centre or ‘tax haven’.
On Monday, Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed rebutted allegations of wrongdoing against the Sharifs, saying that they had never sent any money abroad except for when they were in exile after the 1999 military coup.
