FBR says will take action against Pakistanis named in Paradise Papers

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) said on Monday it would take action against the Pakistani nationals named in the Paradise Papers.

On Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which had unravelled the Panama Papers a year ago, named 135 Pakistani citizens, including former prime minister Shaukat Aziz.

FBR is currently reviewing the Paradise Papers and will take action against the Pakistanis named in the document, a spokesman said here.

He said that notices would be served to all those people mentioned in the papers.

What is Paradise Papers?

The Paradise Papers is a database comprising around 13.4 million documents, which reveals over 25000 companies owned by the world's rich and influential individuals.

The documents were obtained from two companies in Singapore and Bermuda by a German newspaper and shared with the ICIJ. A major part of the Panama Papers comprises leaked files from company 'Appleby'.

The files reveal data of over 25,000 companies owned by individuals from 180 countries, from 1950 to 2016.

Number of politicians and public officials

Paradise Papers: 127 politicians and public officials (14 current or former country leaders included) from more than 47 countries

Panama Papers: 140 politicians and public officials from more than 50 countries

Which leak is the bigger than other?

Paradise Papers is bigger in number of records (13.5 million in Paradise Papers vs. 11.5 million in Panama Papers) and Panama Papers is bigger in terms of size of the leak (1.4 Tb in Paradise Papers vs. 2.6 Tb in Panama Papers).

It is one of the biggest leaks in the history of journalism instead of the biggest, and then one may also compare some of the different figures related to the data size between Paradise Papers and previous leaks.