Offshore companies: Jamaat moves SC against corruption

Siraj says party has no other adequate remedy

ISLAMABAD: Taking the lead in the legal battle against corruption, the Jamaat-i-Islami on Wednesday filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court.

Jamaat-i-Islami chief and Senator Sirajul Haq is the plaintiff in the case. The petition, invoking Article 184(3) of the constitution, made the parliamentary affairs, law and justice and finance ministries, the Cabinet Division and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as respondents.

Addressing a news conference a couple of days ago at the party’s provincial secretariat in Lahore, Siraj said the Panama leaks had disclosed that the prime minister’s family and others had siphoned off billions of rupees to foreign banks, a serious disclosure, which forced Nawaz Sharif to address the nation three times.

In his petition, instead of requesting for formation of a commission to probe the Panama leaks, the plaintiff through his counsel Asad Manzoor Butt prayed the apex court to direct the respondents to initiate inquiry/investigation followed by trials under the law.

He also prayed that a direction be issued to arrest the culprits, and recover and bring public money back to Pakistan, which was illegally transferred abroad. Interestingly, the JI has not made the prime minister as respondent in its petition.

Moreover, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is also ramping up pressure on Nawaz Sharif by pursuing various means to have him disqualified from the National Assembly for allegedly concealing his assets in the wake of the Panama leaks.

The PTI has also decided to file a petition of its own in the Supreme Court on the same issue after passage of a resolution by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly.

The JI chief states that under current circumstances, Pakistan has been fighting the war on terror but government officials and other legal entities are being involved in setting up ‘offshore companies’ through illegal means, which is also against the constitution.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2016.