Are people featuring in PanamaLeaks bigger culprits in the eye of law?

LAHORE: There is no doubt that all Pakistanis named in Panama Papers should be probed and prosecuted against, but what about the hundreds of affluent bank defaulters whose names were published in numerous Urdu and English newspapers on August 28, 1993 by the then caretaker government of premier Moeen Qureshi and the 8,041 individuals — including 34 politicians — who had benefitted from General Pervez Musharraf’s controversial October 5, 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO)?

It is worth recalling that on December 16, 2009, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had declared the NRO as never to have existed and against the Constitution. The apex Pakistani court had thus revived all cases and had reversed the acquittals of the beneficiaries of this Presidential Ordinance.

In a late-night short order that has no parallel in country's judicial history, the 17-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by the then Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, had ordered the federal government to also initiate immediate steps to seek revival of the original requests or claims for mutual legal assistance to pursue money laundering cases pending in foreign countries, including Switzerland.

Politicians, bankers, diplomats, bureaucrats and businessmen etc — who were guilty of committing crimes between January 1, 1986, and October 12, 1999 -- were granted amnesty by general Musharraf, but the Supreme Court had ruled that the NRO was null and void.

It has been more than six years since the NRO was declared ultra vires the Constitution, but one has never heard any government talking in terms of taking its beneficiaries to task in line with the 2009 Supreme Court order!

As far as caretaker premier Moeen Qureshi’s much-trumpeted and widely-publicised August 1993 list of bank defaulters is concerned, scores of eminent politicians featuring in it have sat in numerous parliaments during the last 23 years, and a good number of them have since called shots from the cozy corridors of power -- which is ironic.