Thursday, April 20, 2017

Panama Papers: Pakistan's most corrupt Prime Minister remains in office

Pakistan's Supreme Court has ruled that there was insufficient evidence to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over corruption allegations, but has ordered a high-level investigation into the charges.
In 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) leaked more than 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing a web of off-shore companies owned by the world's financial elite, including many sitting and former members of governments around the world.
Owning off-shore companies is not illegal in many countries, but, for many, the most striking revelation from the documents was the scale of the wealth being stored in tax havens.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's children were implicated in the leak, with documents showing that they held several companies listed in the British Virgin Islands. Last year, Pakistan's Supreme Court took up the case of establishing whether or not Sharif and his family had committed any wrongdoing in not earlier declaring these assets, and indeed on whether the funds were obtained legally.
Al Jazeera takes a look at the complex case which has taken Pakistan's first family over a drawn out case in the supreme court.

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