The difficulties with catching the thieves of public money in Pakistan start with a basic definitional problem. There is no precise definition of financial corruption based on political consensus in our society.
What is more, the most basic questions surrounding the issue are missing from the political discourse that is taking place in Pakistani society. Nobody is talking about whether only those responsible for managing public funds can be accused of financial corruption.
There is no definite moral position on whether a private party or businessman evading tax should be chased and prosecuted as ruthlessly as a former prime minister has been hounded.
Nor is there any clarity on the admissibility or rather obligation of bringing to book somebody known to finance an incumbent prime minister’s party but found engaged in unsavory business practices.
Finally, nobody is saying whether lavish and overly generous bestowing of state resources on officials of state departments and institutions should be counted as corruption of the darkest tint.
The Pakistani political discourse is completely devoid of an intellectual capacity to bring forward a definition of financial corruption that could encompass all the facets of financial wrongdoing and exploitation of public money and resources going on in Pakistani society.
Take the example of two key financial backers of Khan’s PTI party named in the Pandora Papers: The disgraced banker Arif Naqvi and prominent businessman Tariq Shafi.
Naqvi, a major donor to Khan’s 2013 election campaign, transferred ownership of three luxury apartments, a country estate and a suburban London property in the UK, to an offshore trust operated by Deutsche Bank in 2017, the files show.
Naqvi was subsequently charged by US prosecutors with more than USD 400 million in fraud. Based these days in the UK, he is on bail facing extradition to the US.
Shafi, another large PTI donor, was shown to hold USD 215 million through offshore companies, according to the Pandora Papers.
These glaring instances of apparent wrongdoing so close to the corridors of power are likely to elude scrutiny precisely because they are so close to the corridors of power. In our country, what makes wrongdoing dangerous also makes it untouchable.
Is it not a serious offence for somebody to stash away their ill-gotten wealth in offshore companies, while offering money to the Prime Minister’s party during elections? Apparently, not, at least in our part of the world, witness our political discourse in the wake of the damming disclosures.
There is a lot of frivolous ruckus over Pandora Papers but not a feather has been ruffled by what seems to be real sleaze, not an eyelid batted over it.
The problem may be partly rooted in the fact that Pakistani investigators ostensibly lack the expertise to investigate and prosecute white collar and financial crime. They are simply not equipped to unravel the intricate webs that underpin shady tycoons’ empires.
For example, it will be an impossible task to link, in a Pakistani court of law, Arif Naqvi with the money he funneled into Prime Minister Imran Khan’s 2018 parliamentary electoral campaign.
Not only do we lack in expertise, we also lack in moral courage and enthusiasm to investigate, especially when it comes to investigating those on the right side of the high and mighty.
The past four years have seen prosecution and arrests in the name of accountability, but the brunt of the campaign has fallen on those on the wrong side of the military or on the wrong side of Imran Khan’s government.
This blinkered accountability puts a question mark on the integrity of institutions vested with the powers to investigate financial wrongdoing by Pakistani citizens, living abroad or within the country.
Pandora Papers—an investigation effort of hundreds of leading journalists from across the world—might further expose Pakistani State’s and its institutions’ moral bankruptcy. Pakistani state machinery has been using anti-corruption slogans to carry out political witch-hunt.
The revelations contained in thousands of files of Pandora papers will further expose this fact of Pakistani politics—you only have to be on the wrong side of powers that to be accused, chased, harassed and prosecuted of financial wrongdoing or corruption.
Take for example the case of Moonis Ellahi – the scion of an elite political family of Punjab once close to General Musharraf and now in alliance with Prime Minister Khan.
The ICIJ investigation alleges Elahi, Khan’s cabinet minister, sought to invest USD 5.6 million from an alleged loan scandal into a trust through international financial services provider Asiaciti Trust in January 2016.
Asiaciti Trust accepted Elahi as a client a month later, despite a risk assessment commissioned by the company identifying his involvement in “several corrupt land development projects” during his time as a provincial politician in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.
In 2007, authorities found that the Bank of Punjab, owned by the then Elahi-led provincial government, had reportedly issued USD 608 million in unsecured loans, many to companies owned by the families or friends of political leaders or to the bank’s own directors.
The Bank soon found the loans unrecoverable, and was promptly rescued by a fat bailout package from the provincial government. The USD 5.6m transaction proposed by Elahi to Asiaciti Trust was allegedly made from the proceeds of those Bank of Punjab loans, ICIJ says.
Should these disclosures not lead to a storm in the power corridors? Why have the country’s premiere anti-crime agencies not jump into action? Why has not the apex court taken a suo motu notice?
We know nothing in this vein will happen, and we know why : The power structure of the country doesn’t view Moonis and his influential family as a threat to the political order prevailing in our society.
Every Pakistani knows the Prime Minister’s promise to investigate every citizen named in Pandora Papers is nothing but a cruel joke. How can he investigate his alleged benefactors? As for those who installed Khan in power, they will happily go along.
Pandora Papers also offer a rare glimpse into the wealth held by former members of our all-powerful military. The Papers show that in 2007, the wife of Lieutenant-General Shafaat Ullah Khan, a prominent general and key ally of then-President General Musharraf, acquired an apartment worth USD 1.2 million through an offshore transaction.
Shah denies any wrongdoing in responses to the ICIJ. On the other hand, no matter how many plots he is allocated in DHAs across the country, a retired army officer cannot afford to buy a USD 1.2 million apartment in London.
Major-General Nusrat Naeem, a former director-general of counterintelligence at Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), owned a company in the British Virgin Islands that was registered in 2009, shortly after he retired.
Naeem was later accused of USD 1.7 million in fraud related to the purchase of a steel mill. The case was eventually dropped and he denies any wrongdoing.
Other military-linked Pakistanis Pandora Papers unearth include two sons of former Pakistan Air Force chief Abbas Khattak, who in 2010 registered an offshore company in British Virgin Islands.
The case of former military officials acquiring financial and land interests in foreign countries should be investigated with particular vigor by state machinery.
Pakistani state is never short of words hammering into popular imagination that the country is facing fifth generation warfare and particular segments of the society are particularly vulnerable to being used as a tool.
Living abroad with their huge financial interests in London and elsewhere, these former military officials wield considerable influence back home and are certainly vulnerable to influence of hostile intelligence agencies.
Also, the Pakistani political elite will be doing a service to the country if they include the overly generous bestowing of state financial, natural and land resources to officials of the state machinery. It constitutes bribery and fuels the dynamic of corruption in the society.
State officials getting these resources as part of their employment perks could be counted as institutionalized or legalized corruption.
These financial, natural, and land resources belong to the ordinary people of Pakistan and they should collectively be beneficiaries of these resources. These resources must in no case be distributed among a particular class like peanuts.
Finally, no political witch-hunt should be tolerated in our society unless this part of state machinery’s function is brought under the net of accountability; we must watch the watchdogs, and we must mind our minders.
