The case of Moonis Elahi, Pakistan’s current water resources minister, appears to be more complicated, with the ICIJ investigation alleging Elahi sought to invest $5.6m from an alleged loan scandal into a trust through international financial services provider Asiaciti Trust in January 2016.Īsiaciti Trust accepted Elahi as a client a month later, despite a risk assessment commissioned by the company identifying his involvement in “several corrupt land development projects” during his time as a provincial politician in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.Įlahi’s father, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, is one of the province’s highest profile politicians, and had previously served as chief minister of Punjab in the military government of General Pervez Musharraf. Tarin said the company never held any assets and was closed soon thereafter. “Before it could happen there was a bomb blast in Karachi, and Tariq bin Laden became disinterested in our bank.” “No account was opened, no transactions were made,” he told Pakistani television channel Geo News on Sunday night, following the revelations.
The financial secrets of some of the world’s rich and powerful have been uncovered in the Pandora Papers. The ICIJ leak named five former high-ranking military officers, including a former air force chief and two lieutenant-generals in the army, as being linked to large offshore investments in property and commercial enterprises.įinance Minister Tarin has denied any wrongdoing in his being named as the director and beneficial owner of Triperna Inc, a holding company established in the Seychelles in 2014, saying that the company was to be used for an investment transaction into a bank that he owned which did not take place. The military is also “the largest conglomerate of business entities in Pakistan, besides being the country’s biggest urban real estate developer and manager, with wide-ranging involvement in the construction of public projects”, according to a 2021 United Nations report. The revelations about the large financial transactions of former members of Pakistan’s military offer a rare glimpse into the wealth of those belonging to an institution that has ruled the country for almost half of its 74-year history. The UN SG's Panel FACTI calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens. We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial "havens". Khan on Sunday said his government would “investigate all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action”. Ownership of offshore holding companies is not illegal in most countries, and does not indicate wrongdoing, but the instrument is frequently used to avoid tax liability or to maintain secrecy around large financial transactions.
The ICIJ’s investigation is based on more than 11.9 million confidential files leaked from 14 offshore financial services firms. Two members of Khan’s cabinet – Water Resources Minister Moonis Elahi and Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin – were prominent in the leaks, alongside more than 700 other Pakistani citizens, including family members of several high-ranking military officials, donors to Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and opposition political leaders’ families. Khan, who rose to power in 2018 on the back of promises to arrest Pakistan’s “corrupt” political elites, was not personally named in the newly leaked documents, dubbed the Pandora Papers, which were released late on Sunday. Prominent members of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, donors to his party and family members of the country’s powerful military generals have moved millions of dollars of wealth through offshore companies, a new investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) alleges.
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