Panama Papers case not accountability but a joke: Sharif

lahore — Raising questions about the proceedings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) about his family’s financial affairs in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that he will “bravely face conspiracies” and will not let them succeed, reports Dawn online.

Talking to reporters in London, he said: “To be honest, what is going on in the form of the joint investigation team’s probe into the Panama Papers case is beyond my comprehension. When they found no corruption in any of the PML-N government’s projects during its four-year rule, they are trying to find something (fishy) in our (private) business. I ask the JIT what it is trying to detect.” He said that he should be given an explanation for the taking over of his family’s industrial units by the government in the 1970s.

Sharif said all his tenures as prime minister were before the people and claimed that no one could raise a finger at him with regard to any financial corruption.

“I had asked the JIT members during my appearance before it about what they were looking for. Our worst enemies [an apparent reference to the PPP’s Rehman Malik] are appearing before it. “The JIT’s history is before everyone. It starts with a WhatsApp call (by the Supreme Court registrar) and even before that.” The prime minister said the nation was headed in one direction and the JIT in another. “The Panama theatre is on at the time when the country is progressing. Our political opponents who are conspiring know that the PML-N will win the 2018 elections and that is why they are hatching conspiracies against us,” he said and added that the Panama Papers case was not about “our accountability but it is a joke”.