Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar constituted a two-member Supreme Court bench on Friday to take up two identical petitions against almost 436 Pakistani nationals, who own offshore companies, and their names were surfaced in the Panama leaks, which led to the disqualification of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister.

The bench comprising Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Justice Maqbool Baqir, that will take up the petitions on November 23, has also issued notices to Attorney General of Pakistan Ashtar Ausaf Ali to assist it on the matter.

The pleas seeking a court order against all those Pakistani nationals who have stashed fortunes in offshore companies were filed by Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Sirajul Haq and Tariq Asad advocate, making the federation of Pakistan through the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs a respondent.

Hearing cases against then prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members in the backdrop of the Panama Papers leaks, a five-member larger bench of Supreme Court headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa on January 24, 2017, had separated the JI chief’s petition from others, noting that the grounds taken in it were too wide to be heard then.

The court, however, had assured the JI chief that his petition would be taken up at some convenient time. On November 3, 2017, the JI chief filed an application seeking early hearing of his pending petition.

In his application filed through his lawyer Muhammad Ishtiaq Ahmad Raja, the JI chief, expressed the fear that if his pending petition was not fixed for early hearing, he as well as the public at large would suffer irreparable losses.

The application stated that the petition was moved in the larger national interest to save the public money, thus any delay in taking up the matter would facilitate the offshore companies’ owners to further conceal their sources and money.

Sirajul Haq did not annex any supporting documents with his petition, however requested the court to order the five respondents – the federal government through the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry, secretaries of law and justice, finance and cabinet divisions and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) – to arrest all those who had invested plundered money in offshore companies.

The petition further requested the court to order the respondents to bring back the public money, which had illegally been transferred to the offshore companies, and deposit the same in the national exchequer.

It contended that government officials, office-bearers of legal entities and citizens were making investments in offshore companies through illegal and corrupt means, which was a matter of concern, thus such persons should be punished in accordance with the law and steps should immediately be taken to end this corrupt practice.

It argued that huge sums of money were laundered or illegally transferred and parked in offshore companies without the knowledge of the state, causing massive financial losses to the national exchequer.

It stated that the investments in offshore companies, in fact, originated from public money, adding that a large number of public office-holders had been making investments in offshore companies and concealing such facts in the statements of assets they submitted to various entities, thus all such people were liable to be disqualified from their offices and punished severely.

It contended that due to negligence and inaction on part of government agencies, the due process of accountability was not getting underway in a transparent manner.

The petition requested the court to order criminal trial of all those who had made such investments by a commission of inquiry under the law of the land.

It pleaded the court to declare the illegal transfer of national wealth for investment in offshore companies as an offence under Section 9 of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999.

A few days ago Sirajul Haq addressed a press conference in which he stressed that all those named in the Paradise leaks and those availing the remission of huge bank loans also needed to be tried in order to make the homeland free of corruption. The JI chief had said that the judiciary would have to undertake a ruthless and indiscriminate accountability of the plunderers in order to preserve its image, dignity and public confidence. He had said that the primary issue of the country was the persistent hold of the feudal lords, capitalists and ‘waderas’ on the national politics.

Published in Daily Times, November 18^th 2017.