News in Brief
Pak to hold Swiss talks: Pakistan is to hold talks with Switzerland on a new tax treaty in the hope of retrieving state assets illegally stashed in the European country’s secretive banking system.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar told parliament negotiations on a revised agreement with Switzerland would be held from August 26 to 28.
Former president Asif Ali Zardari, who left office last September after five years, was dogged throughout his tenure by corruption allegations involving Swiss banks dating back to the 1990s.
He was accused along with his late wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, of using Swiss banks to launder $12 million of illegal kickbacks.
Switzerland enacted a new law in 2011 to make it easier for countries to recover assets stolen by politicians and hidden in its banks.
In early 2012, Switzerland said it had returned $1.83 billion in illicitly-placed assets to countries involved in the Arab Spring regime changes, but Pakistan’s current tax agreement does not allow it to take advantage of the law. (AFP) Pakistan denies: Pakistan Tuesday strongly denied that kidnapped Iranian border guards were ever on its soil, amid fresh efforts to improve fractured ties before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Tehran.
Relations between the neighbours hit a low following the kidnapping by Sunni extremists of five Iranian border guards from Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province, which adjoins Pakistan, in February.
Four of the soldiers were eventually freed and returned home in April. Officials say the fate of the fifth soldier is unknown but he is assumed to have been killed.
The Jaish-ul Adl (“Army of Justice”, in Arabic) rebel group, which says it is fighting for the rights of Sunni Muslims in Shiite-majority Iran, said last month the fifth guard had been executed in late March.
Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan denied the abducted men had ever crossed the border.
“Let me reiterate very categorically that those five Iranian guards were never ever present in Pakistan,” he said. (AFP)