Repatriating cash stashed abroad

Pakistan to join countries like the US and Britain in clamping down on rich people who haven’t reported offshore funds

For all the earnestness of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the decision on Thursday to find ways to repatriate black money stashed abroad by Pakistanis seems like another madcap dash for fool’s gold. It sounds great on paper but the actual repatriation is a tall order indeed for a lot of international governments, including India’s, as discovered recently by Narendra Modi, mainly because the mechanisms needed to achieve that can’t be created at the drop of a hat. This matter requires careful consideration and involves steel-edged political will as well as a vast pool of support across the political spectrum. The prime minister’s special assistant on accountability will have his hands full as well as muddied not most of the time but permanently. We wish him and his merry team of legal and forensics experts in the recovery unit all the best. For repatriation of cash parked overseas serves as an alluring political gambit; it loses its appeal from the standpoint of economics.

Whatever the outcome, Pakistan will be joining countries like the United States and Britain in clamping down on rich people who haven’t reported offshore funds. Under one proposal the government will aim to enforce the rarely used anti-corruption rule that offers informers 20 per cent of the looted wealth recovered through information provided by them.

Islamabad will have to effectively block all routes through which money laundering is carried out and uncover as well as throttle known and concealed sources of black money generation. It needs to finalise agreements with Swiss and other country’s banks where Pakistani nationals may have transferred their assets. Such pacts will grant the government access to essential details of financial assets — of Pakistanis stashing their money in secret accounts.

It is easier for a government to lay its hands on black money within the country than that stashed abroad. Probing money moved abroad is just a convenient way of deflecting attention from addressing the larger issue of unaccounted money within the country. The issue of recovering black money will probably take months and years to resolve. A word of caution: even the best laid out plans fail when there is a lack of implementation.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2018.

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