Pakistan opposition hopes for prime minister’s ouster over property corruption case

ISLAMABAD — Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricket star turned politician, believes his moment of political triumph has finally arrived. On Monday, the country’s Supreme Court will begin a series of hearings in a highly anticipated corruption case that could result in the removal of Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif from office.

“I think he is gone,” Khan said of Sharif, his bitter political rival. “The long, dark night is finally over.”

But a top aide to the prime minister said a verdict resulting in such a removal would be “a judicial coup.”

For more than a year, Sharif has been mired in a bruising controversy over revelations his family owns expensive residential properties in London through offshore companies. The information first surfaced last year in the leaked Panama Papers and was vehemently denied by Sharif.

But Khan has pestered Sharif and his family to provide the paper trails for the purchase of the apartments. “Show the receipts,” is a common slogan of Khan’s supporters and party workers.

The controversy has been a godsend for Khan, who has relentlessly campaigned against Sharif since he took office in 2013 and has been on a personal crusade to remove him from office.

Khan led street protests last year that resulted in the Supreme Court hearing petitions regarding Sharif’s offshore wealth. In April, a five-member bench of the court decided the prime minister could remain in office but ordered an investigation into the allegations. Two dissenting judges, however, recommended Sharif’s disqualification, with one justice equating Sharif to a “godfather” of an Italian-style Mafia.

The team of investigators, which included civil and military officials, completed its inquiry in the past week and concluded Sharif, his two sons and a daughter had not been truthful about their offshore wealth. In a damning report, the investigators accused the members of the ruling family of living beyond their means, hiding their assets, perjury and forgery.

“The report is a pack of lies,” Sharif said in response.

Sharif has refused to buckle under the legal and political pressure.