In its reporting prior to publication, ICIJ had asked Khan about the same companies. In the 48 hours leading up to the publication of the Pandora Papers, a Pakistani television station, ARY-News, reported that, “the owner of two offshore companies registered at a similar address as of Prime Minister Imran Khan has revealed that they were registered by him on a different address and denied any role of the premier in this regard.” The story also attributed the information to “a database of the offshore companies.”ĪRY-News is not an ICIJ partner and doesn’t have access to ICIJ data. The window into the personal finances of individual Pakistani generals is especially rare and provides a glimpse at how top military officers – known in Pakistan as “The Establishment” – use offshore to quietly enrich themselves while maintaining, until now, the military’s image as a bulwark against civilian corruption.
The probe is based on more than 11.9 million confidential files from 14 offshore services firms leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with 150 news organizations around the world. The revelations are part of the Pandora Papers, a new global investigation into the shadowy offshore financial system that allows multinational corporations, the rich, famous and powerful to avoid taxes and otherwise shield their wealth. The general told ICIJ the property purchase was disclosed and proper his wife didn’t reply.
In one of several offshore holdings involving military leaders and their families, a luxury London apartment was transferred from the son of a famous Indian movie director to the wife of a three-star general. Today, a family spokesman told ICIJ’s media partners that, “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons.” He added that the family’s assets “are declared as per applicable law”. Elahi did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment. The files show how 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. Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin gestures during a press conference. The records also reveal the offshore dealings of a top PTI donor, Arif Naqvi, who is facing fraud charges in the United States.
The documents contain no suggestion that Khan himself owns offshore companies.Īmong those whose holdings have been exposed are Khan’s finance minister, Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin, and his family, and the son of Khan’s former adviser for finance and revenue, Waqar Masood Khan.
Military leaders have been implicated as well. Now leaked documents reveal that key members of Khan’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. Accountability will start with me, then my ministers, and then it will go from there.” Our state institutions will be so strong that they will stop corruption. “Whoever violates the law, we will act against them. “We will establish supremacy of the law,” he said. In a televised victory speech, Khan promised a new era. With the support of the military establishment, Khan propelled his reformist party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, past its rivals in the 2018 national elections and propelled himself into the prime minister’s office in Islamabad. Riding a wave of public outrage, Khan led protests around the country and a sit-in at the residence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, demanding that he step down. Among the findings: The children of Pakistan’s sitting prime minister secretly owned a string of luxury London apartments. In 2018, Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricketing legend turned anti-corruption campaigner finally broke through.Īfter more than two decades in the political wilderness, the charismatic Oxford-educated media star seized on the publication of the Panama Papers, the 2016 journalistic exposé that revealed the offshore secrets of the global elite.