LAHORE: Any probe into Panama Papers is likely to be futile as those named in the scam and their facilitators, who have benefited from these off-shore accounts, are present in every sector of the country.

Pakistan Awami Tehreek chairman Dr Tahirul Qadri said this while addressing a meeting of the lawyers’ wing of the party from Canada via video link here on Monday.

He said there was no mention of the two off-shore accounts held by the prime minister in the details Nawaz Sharif had submitted to Election Commission after winning the 2013 polls, which was a crime. Details of the amounts in these accounts were yet to surface, he added.

Mr Qadri said that after the resignations of the prime ministers of Iceland and Ukraine, the PM of Kirghistan was also set to quit his office and “if our prime minister has any moral courage he should follow the suit.”

Saying that all countries whose nationals’ names appeared in the Panama Papers had launched investigations into the scam to unveil the truth, Mr Qadri added that here the very government was using different tactics to hide the facts.

He said the people wanted to know how the Sharifs set up businesses in Saudi Arabia and where did the money come to set up these businesses and how did the money was transferred abroad.

He said it had become imperative that a third-party audit be conducted of the Metro Bus, Orange Train and the China-Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects.

The meeting reviewed in detail the Model Town case and the witnesses’ accounts recorded in this connection.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2016

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