Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly is going to take up the Panama leaks scandal again on Tuesday (today), but there was no clear stance on the Panama Leaks. Due to this, they had not provided any framework for the members of PAC.

The PAC meeting will be chaired by Khursheed Shah, who is also the opposition leader in the National Assembly. PAC will discuss today a single point agenda of Panama leaks and for this, PAC has again summoned the finance secretary, Federal Board of Revenue chairman, NAB chairman, Security and Exchange Commission chairman and the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.

PAC secretariat sources told Daily Times that if the heads of the above departments did not attend today’s meeting, arrest warrants may be issued as PAC gave them one last chance to assure their presence in the meeting. We wrote to all five departments to provide briefs for today’s meeting, but none of them acted upon on this and it seems that these departments had no clear stance and position on the Panama Papers scandal, PAC sources said.

Sources disclosed that FBR would inform PAC about the issuance of notices of those persons whose names appeared in the Panama leaks while NAB and other departments may take the position that they had no legal authority to take action against offshore companies. FBR had issued more than two hundred notices to different people including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s sons Hasan Nawaz, Hussain Nawaz, daughter Maryum Safdar, PTI chairman Imran Khan, Jahanger Tareen and others and sought reply within 15 days. On the other hand, government members in PAC have been advised to defend the prime minister and his family in PAC meeting and confront opposition members.