Never before in its turbulent, roller-coaster history of 70 years, has this question been asked with such intensity and passion as today: Is politics of power all about lining their own pockets by the
rulers? Isn’t politics the most profitable business in Pakistan?
This million dollar question is staring the people of Pakistan, all and sundry, intellectuals and laymen alike, in their faces because of the ongoing legal case against PM Nawaz Sharif and his
progeny in the backdrop of the notoriously famous Panama Papers that leaked sensitive, theretofore secret, information about the clandestine business interests and activities of the Sharif clan presided over by Nawaz.
The case, litigated in the country’s apex court by the iconic ex-cricketer and latter-day crusader-for-clean politics, Imran Khan, has the nation glued to it, not just because the impugned villains belong to Pakistan’s first family.
There’s a more fundamental issue connected to it: How is it that the fortunes of Sharif clan have advanced so meteorically in the years since Nawaz first came to prominence in Pakistani politics with the onset of the 1980s?
Nawaz and his clan were unknown entities until 1980 when the Martial Law administrator of Punjab under the then military strongman, General ZiaulHaq, inducted Nawaz into Punjab’s provincial
cabinet as Finance Minister. That beginning was like Midas’ touch for the novice in politics and his business-savvy clan. There was, literally, no looking back after that break into the coveted land of power.
The Sharif family then happened to have just one factory listed in its assets: A foundry for steel-rolling. Today, it has more than 30 factories dabbling in all sorts of enterprise. But that’s only to
the extent of Pakistan. What the Panama Papers have done is to have lifted the veil of secrecy from the overseas business interests of the first family, said to be owning at least half-a-dozen off-shore companies registered in the names of Nawaz’s two sons, living in London, and his daughter, Mariam Nawaz, whom he has been overtly grooming to succeed him. The litigation is focused on one primordial, and logical, question: Where did the money come from for the Nawaz family to prosper into fabulous riches?
Appended to it is the next question: What was the modus operandi, or the means, deployed to transfer a huge cache of funds to float so many off-shore companies? These companies in turn have purchased not one but four posh apartments on London’s fabulously expensive Park Lane. Nawaz’s eldest son, Hussain, has publicly acknowledged ownership of these up-scale flats in tony London. As of the writing of these lines, Nawaz is lodged in one of these flats on one of his frequent sojourns to London.
Nawaz and his progeny haven’t helped their cause of defending themselves against the charge of money-laundering one tiny bit by coming up—over the months since the Panama Leaks hit them—with a litany of contradictory and incriminating answers. Nawaz ridiculed his accusers by hectoring in a parliamentary debate, last May that he possessed documentary evidence of all his transactions being hunky-dory. He rubbished any suggestion that there was no money trail to prove that assets had been sent abroad legally. But, now, his legal defence before the Supreme Court has failed to establish any money trail.
His daughter and sons have also been tying themselves into ropes with their fatuous and self-incriminating statements that categorically contradict what they had said before the fire reached their door. Daughter Mariam, for instance, trashed her father’s political opponents, Imran in particular, in umpteen television interviews by claiming, with a straight face, that she had no assets whatsoever and
was dependent on her father. But Panama Leaks have named her as the principal beneficiary of the off-shore companies. Her legal defence before the court now maintains that she has never been dependent on her father. Instead, she has been shown as having ‘gifted’ her father with parcels of land worth hundreds of millions of Rupees.
Likewise, the Nawaz sons have themselves in knots over the time-period of their ownership of the London flats. Their legal defence says they acquired the four flats, in 2006, from a Qatari prince, who
owed them millions of dollars and decided to settle the debt by ‘transferring’ the ownership of the flats to them. Hussain Nawaz, in a television interview last year on the heels of the Panama Leaks,
had asserted that he’d ‘purchased’ the flats between 2004 and 2006 and had owned them ever since.
However, BBC, in one of its documentaries on the business interests of Pakistani politicians, produced at the turn of the century, had claimed that Nawaz Sharif had owned the four flats since 1993. BBC not only stands by its claim but has, lately, come up with documentary evidence based on London Registry—the government office that keeps the record of all properties purchased in London—clearly showing the flats’ ownership in the name of Nawaz’s sons in, as early as, 1993.
The evidence so far collected and produced before the apex court points to an unmistakable charade played out by the Nawaz family to cover their foot-prints stretching from Pakistan to far flung parts
overseas. It’s, obviously, a trail of deception to mask and camouflage money made on the lam and hid overseas to hoodwink the people of Pakistan.
But the cyber age has made the Pakistanis wiser, too. The court may take its own time to pronounce Nawaz guilty or not guilty. But in the people’s dock his guilt is beyond doubt.
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The author is a former Pakistani diplomat
Email: K_K_ghori@yahoo.com