Pakistan PM Promises to Investigate Citizens Named in Pandora Papers

By Staff, Agencies

Prime Minister Imran Khan promised Sunday to "investigate" Pakistani citizens connected to a massive probe into the hidden wealth of politicians worldwide, after members of his inner circle were implicated in the report.

The Pandora Papers investigation – involving some 600 journalists from media including The Washington Post, the BBC and The Guardian – is based on the leak of some 11.9 million documents from 14 financial services companies around the world.

Some 35 current and former world leaders are featured in the documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ] – facing allegations ranging from corruption to money laundering and global tax avoidance.

In Pakistan, routinely ranked as among the most corrupt countries in the world, members of Khan's inner circle – including cabinet ministers and their families – are said to secretly own companies and trusts holding millions of dollars.

Khan, who had run for office on an anti-graft platform, said that global poverty levels were fueled by corruption in tax havens, which he said divert funds away from the general public.

He also slammed wealthy countries for not being "interested in preventing this large-scale plunder nor in repatriating this looted money."

The Pandora Papers are the latest in a series of mass ICIJ leaks of financial documents, from LuxLeaks in 2014, to the 2016 Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers in 2017 and FinCen files in 2020.

One of Khan's predecessors, Nawaz Sharif, was ousted by the country's Supreme Court in 2017 over allegations made in the Panama Papers.