ISLAMABAD: As the much-awaited list of Pakistanis owning offshore companies is released today, the close associates of politicians and families of celebrities are set to capture more attention than the businessmen including those who registered companies only to open accounts in Swiss banks.
Identities of some of the high-profile figures suspected to be linked with offshore companies are still being ascertained and will therefore be published after a complete investigation.
The list to be released by The News will be the most comprehensive as painstaking efforts were made to find the last Pakistani buried in the 11.5 million files of the Panama Papers shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Nevertheless, it can’t be claimed with confidence that all of them have been fished out.
Right from the family of Zulfi Bokhari, a key financier of Imran Khan, to Irfan Puri, an oil czar equally close to the PPP/MQM leadership and presently in Dubai jail; from Tariq Islam, a cousin of Benazir Bhutto, to the son of former health minister Naseer Khan; from the family of famous Seth Abid to the son of Admiral (retd) Muzaffar Hassan; and from the Port Qasim Authority’s former MD and NRO beneficiary Abdul Sattar Dero to the former president of Karachi chamber of commerce, Shaukat Ahmed, are in the list.
Mother of Oscar award winner, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy; a billionaire owner of Sachal studio Izzat Majeed; wife of Ghous Akbar; and fashion designer Zehra Valliani along with her brother, an asset manager, Fawaz Valliani have also been identified as owners of offshore companies.
Wamiq Zuberi of the Business Recorder and his wife, former PPP senator Rukhsana Zuberi, have been identified among those invested in an offshore company, a fact Wamiq acknowledged. He explained that they stopped investing after being defrauded and that the company was owned by somebody else who was murdered in Islamabad.
Although Abdul Aleem Khan of the PTI has been claiming with confidence that he didn’t figure in the Panama Papers and The News story about his offshore company was based on his assets declarations, his name is very much in the record.
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