The Pandora Papers, an investigation uncovering financial secrets held by high-profile individuals across the world, includes the names of more than 700 Pakistanis, it emerged on Sunday According to Geo news.
Most prominently these include Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi, Senator Faisal Vawda, Ishaq Dar’s son, PPP’s Sharjeel Memon, the family of Minister for Industries and Production Khusro Bakhtiar, PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan, among others, with alleged links to offshore companies.
Some retired army officials, businessmen — including Axact’s CEO Shoaib Sheikh — and media company owners, have also been named in the leaks.
It must be noted that establishing and declaring an offshore company, which is not involved in any illegal practices, is permissible by law.
The non-profit newsroom and journalist network based in Washington DC, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), has received more than 11.9 million documents containing 2.94 terabytes worth of confidential information from service providers who helped set up and manage offshore companies and trusts in tax havens around the world.
The ICIJ shared the data with 150 media organizations and has led the broadest collaboration in journalism history. It took the ICIJ almost two years to organize the investigation that involved more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, making it the biggest-ever journalism partnership.
By comparison, for the Panama Papers, almost 400 journalists from 80 countries participated in the investigation.
The Pandora Papers leak will uncover financial secrets of more leaders and public officials than the Panama Papers did and provide more than twice as much information about the ownership of offshore companies, reports suggest.
The Panama Papers were based on the data of a Panama-based law firm called Mossack Fonseca that revealed the offshore holdings of 140 politicians, public offshore, and sports stars. Those documents were obtained by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, which contained records dating back 40 years.
The Pandora Papers investigation is bigger in size and revelations about politicians and public officials are also far more than what previously came to public attention.
From Pakistan, there were more than 400 individuals who surfaced in the Panama Papers.
