Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Senator Faisal Vawda, PML-Q leader Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, Ishaq Dar’s son, PPP’s Sharjeel Memon, the family of Minister for Industries and Production Khusro Bakhtiar, PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan, Axact CEO Shoaib Sheikh are among over 700 Pakistanis named by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday for alleged links to offshore companies.
The Pandora Papers, an investigation uncovering financial secrets held by high-profile individuals across the world, includes the names of more than 700 Pakistanis. The consortium released a report on the Pandora Papers titled “Prime Minister Imran Khan promised ‘new Pakistan’ but members of his inner circle secretly moved millions offshore.”
According to the report, leaked documents revealed that “key members” of Prime Minister Imran’s inner circle, including cabinet ministers, their families and major financial backers “have secretly owned an array of companies and trusts holding millions of dollars of hidden wealth”. “Military leaders have been implicated as well,” it said, clarifying that the documents contained “no suggestion” that Imran himself owned offshore companies.
According to the investigation’s findings, Finance Minister Tarin and his family members own four offshore companies. It quoted Tariq Fawad Malik, a financial consultant who handled the paperwork for the companies, as saying that they were set up as part of the Tarin family’s intended investment in a bank with a Saudi business. “As a mandatory prerequisite by [the] regulator, we engaged with the Central Bank of Pakistan to obtain their ‘in-principle’ approval for the said strategic investment,” Malik said. The deal did not proceed.
Omer Bakhtiar, the brother of federal industries minister Khusro Bakhtiar, transferred a $1 million apartment in London’s Chelsea area to his elderly mother through an offshore company in 2018, according to the ICIJ. In a written statement to the consortium, Khusro said a Pakistani anti-corruption agency’s investigation against his family “was founded on baseless allegations which had underestimated his family’s past wealth”, and that it had so far not resulted in a formal complaint.
Former minister for water resources Faisal Vawda set up an offshore company in 2012 to invest in UK properties, the Pandora Papers show. The now-senator told the ICIJ that he had declared all foreign assets held in his name to tax authorities.
The exposé further revealed that the son of former finance adviser to the prime minister Waqar Masood Khan co-owned a company based in the British Virgin Islands. Khan told the ICIJ that he did not know what his son’s company did and that his son lived a “modest life”, and was not his dependent.
“The records also reveal the offshore dealings of a top PTI donor, Arif Naqvi, who is facing fraud charges in the United States,” the ICIJ said. Naqvi, the financier and major donor to Prime Minister Imran’s 2013 election campaign, owned several offshore companies. The files show that in 2017, Naqvi transferred ownership of UK holdings – three luxury apartments, his country estate and a property in London’s suburbs – into an offshore trust operated by Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank declined to respond to ICIJ’s questions concerning the beneficiaries of the trust.
The investigation revealed that “a luxury London apartment was transferred from the son of a famous Indian movie director to the wife of a three-star general”. This was “one of several offshore holdings involving military leaders and their families”, the ICIJ said. The general told ICIJ the property purchase was disclosed and proper; his wife did not reply.
According to details, the wife of retired Lt Gen Shafaat Ullah Shah, a former aide to then-president Pervez Musharraf, acquired a $1.2 million apartment in London “through a discreet offshore transaction” in 2007. The investigation found that the property was transferred to Lt Gen Shah’s wife by an offshore company owned by Akbar Asif, the son of the Indian film director K Asif. Akbar himself is a businessman who owns restaurants in London and Dubai, the Papers reveal.
According to the report, the leaked documents showed that Asif owned a multimillion-dollar property portfolio through a web of offshore companies. It was through one of these companies, Talah Ltd. – registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) – that Akbar transferred the London apartment to Shafaat Shah’s wife. The documents show that the apartment, located near the Canary Wharf financial district, was purchased by the company in 2006. The next year, Akbar transferred ownership of the company to Lt Gen Shah’s wife.
Intrestingly, the investigation found that Akbar’s sister, Heena Kausar, “is the widow of Iqbal Mirchi, a senior figure in a leading organised crime group, D-company”. At the time, Mirchi was one of India’s most wanted men and was under sanction as a drug trafficker by the US. He passed away in 2013.
The Papers also reveal that Raja Nadir Pervez – a retired army lieutenant colonel and later-turned politician, who held various portfolios during the late 80s and early 90s – owned a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, International Finance & Equipment Ltd. According to the leaked documents, “the firm is involved in machinery and related businesses in India, Thailand, Russia and China”. In 2003, Pervez transferred his shares in the company to a trust that controls several offshore companies.
Another key former military leader whose name showed up in the Papers is retired Maj Gen Nusrat Naeem, the ISI’s onetime director general of counterintelligence. “He owned a BVI company, Afghan Oil & Gas Ltd, that was registered in 2009, shortly after his retirement. He said that the company had been set up by a friend and that he didn’t use it for any financial transactions.” According to the report, Islamabad police later charged Naeem with fraud related to the attempted purchase of a steel mill for $1.7 million, but the case was later dropped.
Meanwhile, the Papers also bring to light the notable offshore holdings of close relatives of three senior military figures.
“Umar and Ahad Khattak, sons of the former head of Pakistan’s air force, Abbas Khattak, in 2010 registered a BVI company to invest what documents call ‘family business earnings’ in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and real estate.”
“In an example involving intergenerational wealth transfer, Shahnaz Sajjad Ahmad inherited a fortune from her father, a retired lieutenant general, through an offshore trust that owns two London apartments, purchased in 1997 and 2011 in Knightsbridge, a short walk from Harrods. She, in turn, set up a trust for her daughters in 2003 in Guernsey, a tax haven in the English Channel. Her father was a favourite of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, the country’s first military dictator (1958-1969). After her father retired from the army, he founded one of Pakistan’s biggest business conglomerates. Ayub Khan’s son later married into the family and sits on the boards of several of the group’s businesses. “Taken together, the findings offer a portrait of an unaccountable military elite with extensive personal and family offshore holdings,” the report stated.
The files show how PML-Q leader Chaudhry Moonis Elahi, “a key political ally of Imran Khan’s, planned to put the proceeds from an allegedly corrupt business deal into a secret trust, concealing them from Pakistan’s tax authorities”, according to the consortium. A family spokesman for the Elahi family told ICIJ’s media partners that, “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons.” He maintained that the family’s assets “are declared as per applicable law”.
After being named in Pandora Papers, Punjab Senior Minister Abdul Aleem Khan said that he has same flat and company which has been declared for fifteen years. Responding to the leak documents, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader said that all assets have already been disclosed to the FBR. He further said that assets have also been declared to the Election Commission of Pakistan for the last 15 years, while every time the same company is declared as offshore leaks.
Minutes after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released its investigation report, PML-Q leaders Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Moonis Elahi clarified that their family assets are “declared as per the law”. “Misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files against Chaudhry Brothers in the name of so-called accountability,” the PML-Q spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday.
Quoting the Chaudhry brothers, the spokesperson added that in the past “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons against them in the name of so-called accountability”.