ISLAMABAD: After failing to obtain tax data from the Federal Board of Revenue of the Sharif family and some other people who had appeared before the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), the Senate Standing Committee on Finance decided on Tuesday to approach Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani and seek his ruling to obtain the information.

The Senate Standing Committee, chaired by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla, discussed the matter on July 26 after Senator Azam Swati of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf requested the committee to obtain the tax data of the Sharif family and other people which the FBR had provided to the JIT.

But the FBR declined to accede to the request and the matter was referred to the ministry of law.

The ministry of law said that the FBR could not share information with the parliamentary committee under the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 (ITO).

Raza Rabbani requested to intervene in the matter

Officials of the law ministry attending the committee meeting said that sharing such information was not allowed under Section 216 of the ITO, 2001.

After discussion on the issue, the committee decided to seek opinion of Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani whether or not to approach the Supreme Court for tax data information that the FBR had provided to the JIT.

Senator Kamil Ali Agha said that anything that was part of the court verdict became a public document and the committee could now request the Supreme Court for either information or guidance on the issue.

Senator Saud Majeed of the PML-N suggested that an amendment to the ITO might be moved to strengthen parliament for the long term.

The committee also took a briefing from the Securities Commission of Pakistan (SECP) on right shares issued by the Bank of Punjab this year.

The chairman of the committee asked the SECP to provide data to the chairman if it did not want to share the information with other members of the committee so that a decision could be taken on the issue.

The meeting was informed that 70 per cent right shares or 1.1 billion shares had mobilised Rs13 billion proceeds.

The committee was informed earlier that one of the CEO of the bank had sold one million shares three months before the offer of the right shares had been made.

The SECP officials acknowledged that the proposal of right shares had been under discussion before the shares were offloaded by the CEO.

The committee asked the finance ministry to resolve the issue of separation of Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) and Controller General of Accounts (CGA) cadres after it was informed that the matter had been standstill since 2015.

The AGP and CGA officials stated that there was no progress on the issue since 2015, when the last meeting of stakeholders had taken place.

A summary of the finance division was approved by the prime minister in January 2014 and, subsequently, the matter was referred to the Establishment Division to resolve operational issues.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2017