PM summons high-level meeting to discuss Pandora Papers leak

Prime Minister Imran Khan has summoned a high-level meeting at 5pm today (Monday) to discuss the Pandora Papers saga.

Well-informed sources told Bol News that during the meeting, officials will brief the PM on the situation following the Pandora papers leak.

The meeting will be held at the Prime Minister’s House, and it will be attended by the federal ministers, advisers, and special assistants.

The so-called “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 across 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.

It is pertinent to mention here that PM Khan on Sunday had promised Sunday to “investigate” all 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.

“We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial ‘havens,’” PM had said in a series of tweets.

My govt will investigate all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers & if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action. I call on the international community to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis.

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) October 3, 2021

PM said that global poverty levels were fueled by corruption in tax havens, which he said, diverted 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 PM Imran’s predecessors, Nawaz Sharif, was ousted by the Supreme Court in 2017 over allegations made in the Panama Papers.