PM should tell the nation how he transferred money abroad, says Imran

Asks NAB to probe Sharif family’s ‘offshore wealth’

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Monday asked the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to immediately launch an investigation into the recent revelations about Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family’s alleged offshore wealth and asked the prime minister how the money was transferred abroad.

“If the NAB wants to save its credibility, it should unveil the corruption of these people,” Imran asserted while speaking to a media conference at his Bani Gala residence here. He alleged that Nawaz neither revealed his own assets nor of his children in the statement of assets he filed in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECOP).

He alleged that there were contradictions in the statements given by Hussain Nawaz, which needed to be probed. Imran alleged that Nawaz Sharif had transferred all his assets in the name of his children. The PTI chairman challenged the prime minister to explain from where his sons had accumulated the wealth.

Imran lamented that while recently Maryam Nawaz claimed that she and her family had no assets abroad, Hussain Nawaz shortly after pre-empted the leak following some questioning by the Indian Express and on a staged television show casually revealed that they did indeed have assets abroad owing to the amazing business luck that they had on the loans that they had been given by who they say were friends and well-wishers.

The PTI chief noted that the real questions started here; how did that money leave Pakistan, and where were the money trails that led to it? “Money laundering was a massive international crime, and these papers pretty much implicate the Sharif family in it,” he noted.

He also spoke of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar's affidavit, wherein he revealed that he had laundered money for the Sharifs. The PTI chairman said that if one investigated just into the revelations made by Dar himself, a web of lies from the Sharif family would unravel.

Imran said this convoluted web included all members related to the Sharifs, including Captain Safdar, who never declared the assets of his wife had abroad prior to the 2013 elections. He vowed that the PTI would raise this issue at every forum and added that it was time for the institutions and the people of Pakistan to decide, who they were going to stand with.

Imran noted that when investigations had already begun in countries like France, New Zealand, and Iceland, then what was stopping the NAB, the Election Commission and the judiciary from beginning their probe and investigations into these massive allegations of fraud.

He then openly spoke to the supporters of the PML-N, those who worked in the accountability institutions and asked them to truly question what kind of a future they wanted for their children; one where they would be slaves in debt to the children of these corrupt rulers, or one where they would have access to education, health, real justice given to them by a real functioning state?

“If it is unable to act against the powerful elite then there is no reason for this institution to exist,” he emphasised. The PTI chief said the revelations through Panama Papers were not a conspiracy against Pakistan but the tax evaders were exposed by God.

“I have been raising my voice for the last 20 years on this issue and I still say this is just one firm which has been revealed in the papers. I am sure there are many more,” claimed Imran. Imran believed it was a defining moment for Pakistan and urged the people to ask those, who take their money out of the country, how could they invite foreigners to invest in Pakistan. “If Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and France can start investigation into it then why can’t we?” he asked.

The PTI chief questioned the heavy investment of Sharif family in foreign properties and asked, who lent billions to Sharifs to setup their businesses abroad? “Just when Hussain Nawaz realised their secret companies were about to be surfaced, he appeared on a TV show and owned all these companies,” Imran pointed out.