Jehangir Tareen caught red handed: Zubair Umer

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Privatization Muhammad Zubair Umer Monday said Jehangir Tareen while holding portfolio of minister of industries, had committed insider trading and was made to pay Rs 70 million as fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).

Addressing a press conference, he said Jehangir Tareen had bought shares in the names of his cook and gardener and later accepted his crime when he was caught red handed by the SECP.

The sentence for insider trading in the United States, he said, was life imprisonment.

The minister said they have filed applications against PTI leaders Imran Khan and Jehangir Tareen in the Supreme Court and Election Commission of Pakistan for what he said their financial misdeeds.

"Jehangir Tareen should explain as to how his children bought flats in foreign countries", he added.

The minister said Imran Khan and Jehangir Tareen should publicly reply to the questions raised about their financial wrongs.

The minister said the Sharif family did not change its lawyer but only added senior counsel Akram Sheikh in the legal team.

"Their legal team had met all the deadlines set by the Supreme Court for submitting evidences and replies and not a delay of an hour was made in the Panama Papers case" he said.

Zubair said Imran Khan made big claims in his speeches that he had evidences in the Panama Papers case and continued telling lies till the matter came to the Supreme Court where he had nothing to say..

The whole nation witnessed that PTI’s senior lawyer Hamid Khan was put in an embarrassing situation, Umer said.

“We have sympathy for him as Hamid Khan could not defend the case and resigned in 24 hours due to media pressure as it was clear he faced a situation which was not defendable.”

Hamid Khan read out three speeches of the prime minister as he did not have anything to say and it happened on the first day of start of arguments in the apex court, he recalled.

He said Imran Khan had a 33-year history of financial irregularities.

Imran Khan often quoted from Islamic history but he should also ask his close associate Jehangir Tareen as to why he did not declare his offshore companies in tax declarations, he added.

“Imran Khan himself had offshore company Niazi Services Limited . He should have declared the company in the forms of Election Commission and tax declarations but he did not do so.”

The minister said the offshore company of Imran Khan existed from 1983 to 2015 but he did not mention it in his tax returns and before the Election Commission. Imran Khan and Jehangir Tareen, he said, had failed to answer questions about their financial wrongs.