Political horses are ready to be unleashed in anticipation of the impending judgement in the Panama case. The juries sitting on various media platforms have gone berserk speculating the demise of the Nawaz Sharif regime and the resulting fortunes of the political beneficiaries. The victim of all this, however, is the noble idea of accountability as the honourable judges weigh the evidence – or lack of it – on charges that may or may not have violated relevant laws.
In a mostly undocumented economy with largely informal ways of doing business, it may be quite exceptional to find a business house that goes by the book – especially in what can be described as crony-cum-rental capitalism that thrives on cash. Finding the trail of undocumented money stashed in offshore companies is even harder in a country where laws remain dormant and law-enforcement agencies are known for self-aggrandisement.
The focus at the moment is not on the hundreds of offshore companies hiding billions of dollars, nor on addressing the systemic failures that allow pilferage, tax evasion and money laundering at an immeasurable scale. Instead, the entire attention is on implicating the prime minister in the matter of the alleged ill-gotten flats by two of his sons, who are settled abroad and are beneficiaries of an unaccounted for business from three or four decades earlier.
The plaintiffs were to provide evidence and establish a direct link between the prime minister and the alleged money laundering and tax evasion behind the purchase and ownership of the London flats by his sons. The only vulnerable link in the chain of the money trail was the daughter, Maryam Nawaz: whether she was a beneficial owner of the offshore companies owned by her brothers or a mere trustee while establishing her status as a dependent of her father.
It is no more a secret that the plaintiffs – Imran Khan, Sirajul Haq or Sheikh Rasheed – failed to produce any evidence regarding money laundering directly by PM Nawaz Sharif, and that they had to rely on the alleged untruthfulness of the prime minister for lying in his speech before the National Assembly.
On the other hand, the defence also tried to shift the burden of proof from the prime minister to his sons – and the latter’s responsibility to grandfather Sharif, bypassing father Nawaz, and his princely partner from Qatar. Instead of revealing the money trail, the defence took the court to the dead end of a graveyard. In simple words, the sons sought refuge behind their grandfather’s undocumented businesses with the princely Qatari family, who are a law unto themselves and found it convenient to issue a letter of partnership and transfer of companies owning flats to the grand-heirs of patriarch Sharif. Separately, Maryam Nawaz tried her best to establish her independence from her father.
What is quite obvious from the proceedings is that if the plaintiffs failed to implicate the prime minister in prima facie a money-laundering case, the defence too has not revealed any clue about the money trail (the burden of proof was on the defence as Hassan Nawaz owned the flats). Since the court is still in the dark, we may not see it jumping to conclusions in this specific case, before somehow getting certain facts unearthed by the relevant agencies.
In any case, the most important task remains that of addressing the systemic shortcomings that allow pilferage, tax evasion and money laundering. Attempts to do so should also take into account the failures of our financial law-enforcement agencies and regulatory authorities.
Indeed, after terrorism, corruption has become a menace that is eating into the vital resources of the state and most facets of governance. No institution or department of the state is immune from corruption. But entirely blaming politicians is an exaggeration and, often out of political vendetta, misplaced. We have seen witch-hunts of political adversaries in the past in the name of accountability. And we are now seeing an overwhelming drive to get rid of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by hook or by crook.
Of course, there is no doubt there is a kind of politician found in almost all parties who has grown in size and influence due to suspicious means and blatant corruption. Such people ought to be made accountable and screened out.
The failure of the available accountability machinery and the prevalence of corruption are creating a bigger crisis of legitimacy of both the democratic system and politicians. Various wild and bloody recipes rooted in the dark period of the Inquisition are being proposed, instead of taking a rational approach to eradicate corruption and corrupt practices and ensure transparency and accountability of all.
NAB has failed as have the FBR, the Security Exchange Commission, the State Bank and the FIA. It is much more important to bring extensive reforms in the whole system of governance to strengthen a system of checks and balances, improve investigation and monitoring and eradicate pilferage, rent-seeking, corruption, tax evasion, money laundering and patronage.
Rather than politicising the issue of accountability and chasing the ghosts of the past, parliament must take the initiative in establishing a credible and effective system of accountability, and initiate a process of comprehensive reforms in the entire system of governance. It is far better to oust your political adversaries in the political arena and in the court of the electorate than knocking them out through non-political means. Whatever the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Panama case, the parties to the case must submit to the findings of the apex court.
The writer is a senior journalist.
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