Joint Investigation Team (JIT), formed by Supreme Court (SC) to probe much-hyped Panama Leaks case, has sped up the procedure and decided to seek record of Sharif family’s tax returns from Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
Sources told the six-member team headed by Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Additional Director-General Wajid Zia is considering to write a letter to FBR asking them to provide complete information of Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif and his sons’ financial statements from 1985 to 2016.
The other members of the team include State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) Amer Aziz, Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan’s (SECP) Bilal Rasool, Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) Brigadier Nauman Saeed, Military Intelligence’s (MI) Brigadier Kamran Khursheed and Director of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Irfan Mangi
Earlier, JIT was informed by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that PM Nawaz has no property abroad but he took Rs 20 crore from Hussain Nawaz in 2015 in the form of dollars and euros.
The cost of the premier’s Jati Umra building was shown as Rs 40 lac in the documents while he had declared as many as seven bank accounts under his name.
The investigation team is required to submit progress report after every two weeks to SC while it is also supposed to complete probe within two months.
On April 20, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa had announced Panama Leaks case decision comprising of 540 pages, saying that the court issued a split ruling calling for a joint investigation team. Two of the five judges went further, branding Sharif "dishonest" and saying he should be disqualified, but they were outnumbered.
Panama Papers had published a leak of documents belonging to Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in April 2016 creating an uproar in Pakistan among other countries. The leak was studied by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and stated names of incumbent as well as former leaders of the world who owned shell companies.
Opposition parties in Pakistan saw offshore companies owned by daughter and two sons of PM Nawaz as means to either stash wealth in foreign accounts or purchase assets abroad. The top court took up the case in October last year on petitions filed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Awami Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami and reserved the verdict in February after conducting hearings on daily basis.
