Pandora Papers heat up to Pakistan, Imran Khan said – will be investigated

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that the people of the country whose names have appeared in the leaked information in the matter of hiding wealth, their government will get it investigated.

This leak has been named Pandora Papers. Among them are the names of hundreds of people in Pakistan. The names of many people of Prime Minister Imran Khan's cabinet are also included in this. According to the leak, these people secretly took out their wealth through investments in offshore companies.

This leak is considered to be one of the biggest financial leaks in the world so far. Through this, secret deals of businessmen and leaders from all over the world have been brought to the fore.

Imran Khan said that if any wrongdoing is found, then he will take action.

The information about the secretly kept wealth came to the fore through Global Investigation. This investigation is based on 12 million files leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). ICIJ has worked closely with more than 140 media organizations around the world.

According to reports in the Pakistani media, the names of more than 700 people of the country are in the Pandora Papers. These include two members of Imran Khan's cabinet.

names of ministers

According to the leaked documents, Pakistan's Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen and his family members have four offshore firms.

Financial advisor Tariq Fawad Malik, who oversaw the companies' paperwork, told ICIJ that these companies were created by Tareen's family to invest in a bank through Saudi business contacts. Malik further told that but this deal could not move forward.

Leaked documents also show that Water Resources Minister Chaudhry Munis Elahi pulled out of plans to invest in offshore tax havens after he was warned that these would be reported to Pakistan's tax department.

A spokesperson for the Elahi family, however, dismissed the allegations, saying the details of their assets were declared by the law.

"The data in these documents have been presented in the wrong context out of political vendetta," the spokesperson said.

Imran Khan said in a tweet on Monday that he welcomes the things highlighted in these papers.

In 2016, before becoming the Prime Minister, Imran Khan-led the opposition's demand for a probe into the hiding of the wealth of the country's rich, whose names had appeared in the Panama Papers leaks released earlier.

dispute over claim

Meanwhile, a separate controversy erupted in Pakistan when state TV channel PTV falsely claimed that the name of Junaid Safdar, a grandson of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was also included in these documents.

It was alleged on government TV that five companies were registered in the name of Safdar. This was also tweeted by an assistant of Imran Khan and another member of the government.

On Sunday, a Twitter account by the name of "PandoraLeaks" also surfaced in which claims were made about Junaid Safdar. But this account has nothing to do with Pandora Papers.

A team of journalists associated with the Pandora Papers investigation in Pakistan has confirmed to the BBC that Junaid Safdar's name is not in the documents.

Nawaz Sharif had resigned from the post of Prime Minister in 2017 only after his name appeared in the Panama Papers.

Although the name of his son-in-law Ali Dar is included in the names of the Pandora Papers. Dar has denied doing any illegal work and said that he is not a resident of Pakistan in terms of tax.

According to ICIS, more than 600 journalists from 117 countries have worked on the Pandora Papers documents. In the UK, the BBC Panorama and the Guardian newspapers led the investigation.