President calls for probing 700 Pakistanis named in Pandora papers

President calls for probing 700 Pakistanis named in Pandora papers and questions rationale of tax havens.

On Thursday, President Dr Arif Alvi Thursday questioned justification of tax havens which the West protected.

He said after Panama and Paradise, now Pandora papers had confirmed that 1000s of offshore companies used for money laundering of looted wealth.

President calls for probing 700 Pakistanis named in Pandora papers

He said the 700 linked to Pakistan must be investigated for illegality and source of money and that the plundered money must be brought back.

On Twitter, he asked: “But what about these tax havens?”

The president said the West protected tax havens for more than a century.

He further said they had a long history of hiding plundered wealth from many countries, including Pakistan.

President estimated that wealth runs into trillions of dollars. And it seemed a “sophisticated scheme in the style of East India Company.”

He said while Pakistan was cleaning its system to stop its wealth from going out and the FATF helped in this regard.

However, “the receivers of our wealth have enriched themselves at the cost of poor of the world for too long.”

Moreover, the president also quoted the verses of Allama Iqbal’s anthology “Zarb-e-Kaleem.”

Iqbal had said, “both same looters small and big in dialogue between a pirate and Alexander.”

Meanwhile, 35 world leaders among 330 public officials named in Pandora Papers leak.

They used offshore tax havens to hide assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a massive investigation has found.

According to Al Jazeera, the leaked records come from 14 offshore services firms from around the world – from Vietnam to Belize to Seychelles.

The Pandora Papers, published on Sunday, based on documents leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ).

GTV