182 Pakistanis named in Panama leaks untraceable
ISLAMABAD: The locale of scarcely 200 Pakistanis named in Panama Papers and Bahamas Papers sojourn a tip for a country’s taxman.
The Panama and Bahamas Papers are outrageous collections of personal papers leaked by a International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in Apr and September, respectively.
These Papers suggested names of around 600 Pakistanis, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s children, who owned offshore companies in ubiquitous taxation havens. The Supreme Court is already conference a series of petitions essentially seeking Sharif’s suspension in a arise of these revelations.
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The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has already sent notices to those people whose accurate identities and addresses are available. However, a FBR’s Intelligence and Investigation (In-Land) Directorate is still struggling to discern accurate identities of some 182 of these Pakistanis.
In this regard, a FBR directorate has sought assistance of a country’s tip database authority, a National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), for a purpose of their identification.
Last month, a FBR wrote a minute to NADRA requesting it to find out and allow a computerised inhabitant temperament cards (CNICs), pass sum and ‘verisys’ of these individuals. The minute is accessible with The Express Tribune.
‘Verisys’ relates to a simple sum about a citizen’s temperament including his name, CNICs series etc.
Interestingly, a list of 182 people sent to NADRA for a hunt also contains names of some obvious persons including a sitting decider of a Lahore High Court Justice Farrukh Irfan Khan and his daughter Maria Farrukh Irfan Khan.
It also includes name of Zain Iftikhar Sukhera – a family crony of former PM Yousuf Raza Gilani – who was also named in Hajj crime case; and Rukhsana Qayyum, a family member of former profession ubiquitous Malik Muhammad Qayyum. And nonetheless a FBR is clueless about these ‘famous’ Pakistanis.
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Names of distinguished politicians from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and members of Sharif family are not enclosed in a list as they are already in association with a FBR over a issue.
The FBR orator Dr Muhammad Iqbal reliable a development, observant that due to a singular range of a leaked information, that does not enclose a CNIC and pass numbers or dates of birth of a individuals, a taxation management has to find NADRA’s help.
“These 182 people are those whose accurate temperament sum are not accessible with a FBR,” Dr Iqbal said. These sum have been sought underneath territory 176 of a Income Tax Ordinance 2001.
He pronounced sum would assistance in carrying brazen a tentative investigations into offshore entities and resources and their owners and safeguard timely end of a ongoing probe.
“In many cases a directors of a same offshore entity seemed to be family members and NADRA could snippet a people by their family trees,” he added. These 182 people possess a sum of 108 offshore firms.
At a commencement of final month, a FBR told a Supreme Court that out of 336 individuals, usually 133 responded to a notices served on them to find sum of their investments in offshore companies. These notices were served in a initial week of Sep 2016.
Published in The Express Tribune, Dec 7th, 2016.
Article source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/1255931/182-pakistanis-named-panama-leaks-untraceable/