ISLAMABAD, Oct 4, (Asia Free Press): Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday welcomed the Pandora papers leaks and said his government will investigate all the citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers and appropriate action will be taken if any wrongdoing is established.
In a series of tweets , he welcomed the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion and corruption and laundered out to financial havens.
He said the UNSG’s Panel FACTI calculated a staggering 7 trillion dollars in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens.
He said his over-two decades struggle has been premised on the belief that countries are not poor but corruption causes poverty because money is diverted from being invested in our people.
He further said this resource-theft also causes devaluation, leading to thousands of poverty-related deaths.
The Prime Minister said just like the East India Company plundered the wealth of India, ruling elites of developing world are doing the same.
He said unfortunately, the rich states are neither interested in preventing this large-scale plunder nor in repatriating this looted money.
He called on the international community to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis.
He said if unchecked, inequalities between rich and poor states will increase as poverty rises in the latter.
He said this in turn will lead to a flood of economic migration from the poor to the rich states, causing further economic and social instability across the globe.
The latest Pandora papers claimed that several Pakistani politicians, former military officers and businessmen have alleged offshore companies, among them
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 and others
