Prove trail of money, SC tells Imran

Offshore company

Chief justice asks PTI counsel what will be the consequences if his client failed to prove loan had been taken from Jemima for purchase of Banigala property

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court directed the PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday to furnish with it, within a week, detailed information about his offshore company and prove the trail of money used for the purchase of his Banigala property.

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nasir and comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Faisal Arab, resumed hearing of the petition filed by the ruling PML-N leader Hanif Abbasi seeking disqualification of the PTI chief and Secretary General Jehangir Tareen over alleged tax-evasion.

The petitioner had accused the two PTI leaders of not declaring their assets to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and prayed the apex court to unseat them for their alleged violation of the Income Tax Ordinance, 1979 and the People’s Act, 1974.

The petitioner requested the apex court to direct Imran Khan to produce the account statement of Niazi Services Limited from its opening to-date along with record of the Citibank accounts to establish the authenticity and reliability of his documents.

Abbasi contended that Khan’s counsel had disclosed that the loan for the purchase of the London flat was paid back to Jemima Khan from the account of Niazi Services Limited by a cheque for GBP562,415.54.

The petitioner submitted that the refund of the amount was of course important but what was more important was the source from where the 117,500 GBP funds were allegedly generated by Imran Khan, who claims to have acquired the same through cricket on which taxes were paid both in Australia and London and yet no record of any payments or taxes paidthereon in London and Australia had been provided.

“I want to know where the seed money for the purchase of flat in 1983 came from?” the petitioner asked. It was further contended that the amount from the sale of flat in 2003 was brought to Pakistan after repaying the alleged loan to Jemima but the means of bringing this large amount had not been fully disclosed.

At the outset of proceedings, the chief justice observed that Imran would have to prove in the court that he had had taken loan from his wife.  He asked Imran’s counsel Naeem Bukhari what will be the consequences if it could not be proved that loan had been taken from Jemima for the purchase of Banigala property. The court told Bukhari that he will have to satisfy it on the trail of money used for the purchase of Banigala property.

Bukhari informed the court that Jemima had been contacted for the documents for their production before the court and sought more time to produce complete record of banking transactions leading to the purchase of land.

Meanwhile, the court adjourned the hearing for Wednesday (today) after seeking a reply from the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to the PTI’s objection to its jurisdiction to determine the party’s foreign funding issue.