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| Politicians Dominate Names of Offshore Company Owners in Panama Papers |
Why did the Indian Army's vice chief say "Pakistan probably has better defense industrial base"? Is it out of frustration with the performance of India's defense industry? How's Prime Minister Modi's "Make In India" initiative doing since 2014 when it was launched with a lot of fanfare? Has India's dependence grown or shrink since then? Why is the White House in such chaos? Who's responsible for it?
President Donald Trump? His top aides? His outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus? or his newly hired communications director Anthony Scaramucci? Will General Kelly as the new chief of staff bring an end to the infighting and restore order in the White House?
Viewpoint From Overseas host Misbah Azam discusses these questions with panelists Ali Hasan Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
https://youtu.be/ITFGYgjMPuY
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Panama JIT in Pakistan
Did Musharraf Steal Pakistani People's Money?
Modi's "Make in India" Hype
Aircraft Sales Lead Pakistan's High Value Military Exports
Trump's White House
Talk4Pak Youtube Channel
9 comments:
#Pakistan #PanamaVerdict "worth applauding.....difficult but necessary conclusion"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-ouster-in-pakistan-is-actually-a-glimmer-of-hope/2017/07/30/ba8e13da-73bc-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.0d6cbed1588a
The (Panama) papers revealed that three of Mr. Sharif’s children owned or could sign authorizations for offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. This raised questions about the origins of the family wealth. Mr. Sharif told the court through his lawyer that he did not own any shell companies or property through offshore holdings himself, without addressing whether his children did. The Panama Papers led to protests, and calls for his resignation, including from opposition party leader Imran Khan, the former cricket star.
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The court subsequently created a five-member panel to investigate, and the panel’s report accused Mr. Sharif’s family of perjury, forgery and hiding assets. It found, among other things, that Mr. Sharif’s daughter, Maryam Nawaz, potentially falsified ownership documents that were dated 2006 but written in a font that was not commercially available until 2007. The court then acted unanimously to force him out of office.
Pakistan undoubtedly faces a period of political uncertainty. The next elections are scheduled for 2018. Meanwhile, Mr. Sharif’s ruling party enjoys a strong majority in Parliament. He is expected to install a loyalist as interim prime minister this week and, longer-term, his brother, Shahbaz Sharif, in the post. Whatever the political outcome, Pakistan seems likely not to be shaken from its desire for closer relations with China, which is pouring $50 billion into infrastructure projects as part of its attempt to build a massive trade route. Pakistan’s military and its intelligence service also will remain powerful forces behind the scenes of the Muslim-majority nation, a nuclear weapons state.
Still, Pakistan has so often been a miasma of uncertainty, impunity, coercion and violence that it is worth applauding the Supreme Court’s determination to see this case to a difficult but necessary conclusion. It’s a glimmer of hope for accountability and rule of law in a nation that could use much more of it.
As for Pakistan's fresh start, how many have their been during the past 70 years? Several. And none have borne fruit. Thus my realism.
How much is the future going to differ from the past?
Is this a radical break?
Maybe, but I am not persuaded. Of course, I am willing to sit and weight. It is a testable hypothesis. It will either be accepted or rejected by the data as the future unfolds.
Just so everyone knows, I was very optimistic about Pakistan's prospects up to the disaster that befell the country in 1971. Then I saw what ZAB was doing and that led to a series of disappointments and depression.
I stopped following developments back home, focusing mostly on its military history (which continues to be my primary focus).
After the blunder in Kargil the spring of 1999, I sensed a need for change and began writing and reading just about everything that was published about Pakistan. I would not have spent so much time reading and writing if I did not sense something could still happen that would change the future of the country.
But nothing did. I stopped writing a few years ago, overcome by pessimism.
As they say, "A pessimist is a former optimist who kept notes."
Would you and the others please explain the rationale for your optimism? I would love to be proven wrong. I am all ears.
Ahmad: "Would you and the others please explain the rationale for your optimism? I would love to be proven wrong. I am all ears."
Impunity is Pakistan's biggest problem.
Ousting Nawaz Sharif is a good start toward establishing rule of law and justice for all regardless of their power or privilege.
It gives me great hope for the future.
Here's a post I wrote recently offering just one example of how ruling politicians steal from Pakistan's children to damage its future:
http://www.riazhaq.com/2017/07/political-patronage-pakistan-school.html
Education spending in Pakistan has increased at an annual average rate of 17.5% since 2010. However, the school enrollment and literacy rates have remained flat and the human development indices are stuck in neutral. This is in sharp contrast to the significant improvements in outcomes from increased education spending seen during Musharraf years in 2001-2008. An examination of the causes shows that the corrupt system of political patronage tops the list. This system jeopardizes the future of the country by producing ghost teacher, ghost schools and absentee staff to siphon off the money allocated for children's education.
Millions of pounds worth of #London property of #NawazSharif family could be SEIZED by #Pakistan govt #PanamaVerdict
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/837407/pakistan-government-mayfair-nawaz-sharif-corruption-investigation
Sharif, Pakistan's longest-serving PM, was disqualified by the Supreme Court last week following revelations first revealed in last year's Panama Papers linking him to his son's UK property empire.
Hassan Sharif, 41, who lives in one of his family's Mayfair apartments, is believed to hold at least 15 flats, houses and offices in Britain, despite having "no declared source of income".
Mr Sharif has said the allegations are part of a conspiracy against his father.
A Joint Investigation Team in Pakistan found Mr Sharif had founded a number of companies in London with an accumulated loss of more than £10million, all while building "an empire of real estate in the UK", the Times reported.
Investigators said they therefore believe that "the build-up of assets was through irregular means and Hassan Nawaz was used as a proxy to build up family assets”.
They said: “It is a reasonable assumption that more properties in the UK have been held by Hassan in his name or in the name of his companies or in the name of his family members."
The investigation will focus on the three Mayfair flats owned by the Sharif family, including Hassan Sharif's home address.
As well as the former prime minister and his son Hassan, his other son Hussain and daughter Maryam are also part of the probe.
Hussain and Maryam used the properties as leverage for a £7m loan from Deutsche Bank in 2008, the Panama Papers revealed.
Sharif's involvement is relatively minor and not strictly corruption.
He is alleged to have received £2,000 from his son Hassan's Dubai-based company which he failed to declare, a disqualifying offence under the constitution.
Sharif claims he never received the money.
Speaking in Islamabad on Saturday, the deposed PM said: "How can I file a tax return on a salary I never received?"
Burying Dar-nomics. #Pakistan #PMLN #PPP #Corruption #Taxes #Exports #Industry #Economy Sakib Sherani
https://www.dawn.com/news/1352190
Here is a snapshot of PML-N’s economic policies in numbers.
On top of these new taxation measures, the government has been withholding refunds of businesses of around Rs150bn to Rs200bn while collecting advance tax to bolster its revenue performance under the IMF programme. Measures such as the foregoing in particular, including the levying of sales tax of up to 52pc on high speed diesel, a main stay input for the entire economy, have been particularly damaging for industry.
In terms of borrowing, the government’s debt-accumulation since 2013 has pushed up total public debt from nearly Rs14.5 trillion in FY13 to around Rs21.5tr by June 2017 — adding Rs7tr in just four years. More worryingly, the PML-N government has contracted new foreign loans of nearly $40bn in four years, an unprecedented amount, pushing total public external debt outstanding in net terms (after repayments), from $51bn in June 2013 to $62bn at the end of March 2017.
Under the third leg of economic policy under Mr Dar, the exchange rate has appreciated 26pc in real effective terms since December 2013 — hurting exports while giving a boost to all manner of imports including non-essential consumer and luxury items. In addition, the overvalued exchange rate has acted as a spur to capital flight from the country.
A combination of unaddressed structural challenges from the past, and Mr Dar’s policy framework since 2013, has resulted in Pakistan’s export sector (manufactured goods) shrinking to 6.9pc of GDP from around 14pc in the mid-2000s.
So the first order of business for the new PML-N prime minister should be to undo the punishing taxation burden on industry imposed by Mr Dar’s policies, and to rectify the policy framework in ways that will boost industry, in particular exports, in the long run. With Pakistan no more sleepwalking into a balance of payments crisis but sliding into one (even with international oil prices at around $50!), the government’s policy space and options are becoming limited. It, or its successor, will need to begin talking to the IMF for a new loan programme sooner rather than later, which will curtail freedom of movement for introducing industry- and investment-friendly policies.
However, some immediate concrete policy measures to reduce the cost of doing business in the country (on the taxation side), combined with a strong signal that the PML-N government is moving away from Mr Dar’s damaging economic policies, will be welcome as well as hopeful news for Pakistani industry.
Tailpiece: Thank God for the PPP government in Sindh! In a huge service to real democracy, its uninterrupted misrule since 2008 has buried some apologetic myths forwarded since the July 28 Supreme Court ruling to ‘defend’ the pathetic non-performance of political governments.
With the military commanding the heights in foreign and security policy, and not in terms of economic governance, it cannot be blamed if Thari children die each year due to lack of medicines in public hospitals, or if roads in Larkana are in a shambles, or there are heaps of uncollected garbage in Karachi. With around Rs2,100bn transferred to Sindh from the centre since 2013 under the National Finance Commission awards, in addition to the nearly Rs200bn tax collected by Sindh itself over this period, the issue is not even of money.
It boils down to corruption pure and simple. Large-scale, pervasive and systemic corruption has been widely documented as the undoing of many resource-rich but underdeveloped countries, particularly in Africa, which have no civil-military imbalances to worry about. Regular, ongoing attempts to shift the blame from bad governance and grand corruption (political sleaze) to tensions in civil-military relations are disingenuous as well as a disservice.
‘Over-invoicing by power companies’: PIL in Delhi HC seeks SIT probe against firms
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is currently investigating over a dozen firms, including firms of the Adani Group, Essar Group and Reliance ADAG Group, among others for alleged over valuation of Indonesian coal imports and power equipment imports between 2011 and 2015.
http://indianexpress.com/article/business/companies/over-invoicing-by-power-companies-pil-in-delhi-hc-seeks-sit-probe-against-firms-4842567/lite/
The NGOs, through senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, have alleged that some power firms are involved in “over-invoicing of about 400 per cent of power equipment and fuel in order to siphon off money to their promoter firms registered in tax havens and also in order to inflate electricity tariffs which are based on the cost of equipment and fuel”.
“This is a very serious matter involving tens of thousands of crore. The CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry against some Adani Group firms, which was closed during the tenure of Ranjit Sinha, who is now being investigated by the SIT. Over-invoicing by these firms leads to taking more loans from banks than is required, cheating of consumers as higher tariffs are passed on to the consumers and cheating of shareholders of these firms as money is being siphoned off abroad,” Bhushan said.
On Wednesday, Justice C Hari Shankar recused himself from hearing the case as he has appeared for some of the firms named in the petition in the past.
The counsel appearing for the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, said the government is opposing even the issuance of notice in the petition as it would “jeopardise the entire power sector.”
The high court will now hear the case on September 20.
According to the DRI, overvaluation of power equipment and coal has the effect of artificially raising the tariff values fixed by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission or the respective state regulatory commissions.
The DRI has alleged that several traders are directly importing Indonesian coal but the invoices are “routed through one or more related /associated intermediary firms based abroad” after artificially inflating its value. To justify the inflated price, “manipulated test reports” of the quality of coal is submitted to PSUs and Customs. This coal is then supplied to public power generation firms at the “artificially inflated import price and the inflated price is remitted from India to the intermediary firms abroad which remit only the actual price to the suppliers of the coal and the balance is siphoned off elsewhere”.
Eroding democratic values
Zahid HussainUpdated October 04, 2017
https://www.dawn.com/news/1361527
"Most worrying is that this person-specific amendment (to help Nawaz Sharif) in the law and the manner in which it was railroaded has further eroded democratic norms. Now anyone condemned by a court of law can form and lead a political party. Ironically, a person barred from holding public office can still be kingmaker and continue to run the government through proxies"
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The government, which is preoccupied with the political rehabilitation of the former prime minister, is fast losing its governing space. The clash among institutions has made the situation extremely chaotic. The bizarre incident outside the accountability court on Monday during the appearance of the former prime minister is quite ominous. The controversy over the deployment of the Rangers reflects an anarchic situation.
It is, indeed, a serious issue that the interior minister did not know who called the Rangers. The situation turned weirder still when Ahsan Iqbal was stopped from entering the court premises. Surely the Rangers did not come there without orders from somewhere. His public outburst and remarks about a state within a state demonstrated his helplessness.
It is certainly not a good omen for the government. The incident reinforces the perception about the government’s shrinking governing space while it is focused more on defending the ousted prime minister and his family. It is not enough to shout from the rooftop about the ‘invisible hand’. It is the governance, stupid. We have already seen the establishment gaining greater space.
Nawaz Sharif has called for a grand national dialogue among political parties. One cannot disagree with the proposal. There is, indeed, a serious need for the main political parties to come to an agreement on some kind of framework to strengthen the democratic process. But Sharif’s call may have come too late and at a time when he has been disqualified for not being honest and is facing trial. That makes the other political parties suspicious of his intent. There is scepticism that it is all about him being bailed out of his plight.
Sharif had a great opportunity to strengthen the institutionalised democratic process over the last four years. Instead, he rendered parliament ineffective and weakened other civilian institutions thus allowing nonelected elements to expand their space. He established his personalised rule with the help of close family members. Even the cabinet seldom met and was virtually turned into a rubber stamp. His current confrontational approach towards the judiciary will not inspire other political parties to gather.
Surely there is a need for a charter of democracy or grand national dialogue to establish civilian supremacy and remove the existing imbalance of power that has allowed non-elected institutions to undermine elected civilian governments. But personalised power is not an alternative for civilian supremacy. Democracy is not limited to winning the electoral mandate, it also means implementing the rule of law and democratic accountability. One wishes that Nawaz Sharif understood this.
More importantly, there is a need for an economic charter among political parties to guarantee the continuity of economic policies irrespective of whichever party is in power. Perhaps, this will become possible after the elections.
New #UK #property law could spell doom for #Pakistan politicians. #NawazSharif #MaryamNawaz #PanamaPapers #London #Corruption
https://www.aninews.in/news/world/europe/new-uk-property-law-could-spell-doom-for-pak-politicians201802051452480001/
London [UK], Feb 5 (ANI): The United Kingdom Government has introduced new rules which gives the law enforcement officers sweeping powers to usurp assets and properties that have been accrued through "dirty money."
The new rules have been designed to stop corrupt people from using the UK as a safe haven to amass unaccounted wealth. Individuals can be fined and jailed if they make misleading statements.
British authorities have the right to freeze and recover properties of more than 50,000 pounds if individuals cannot give a genuine explanation on the source of the property and legal proof showing that they have acquired the property legally, The Dawn reported.
The UWO (Unexplained Wealth Order) that initially came into force on February 1, looked to target Russian businessmen and industrialists having assets in the UK. However, the new property law could, however, spell the same trouble for some Pakistani politicians.
Another issue that goes against Pakistani politicians is "the lower threshold as a UWO made in relation to a non-EEA [European Economic Area] PEP [Politically Exposed Person] would not require suspicion of serious criminality".
London-based anti-corruption group, Transparency International (TI) said that it has identified properties worth 4.4 billion pounds in the UK that can be taken up in the new legislation.
It has already prepared a list of five cases and feels that the investigation would not be delayed for long. This also includes the Avenfield House flats case, involving former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Suspecting Sharif as the owner of four Avenfield House flats worth eight million pounds, TI said in a statement, "The Land Registry documents showing the four properties are owned by two companies registered in the British Virgin Islands- Nescoll Limited and Nielsen Limited.
"According to information published as part of Panama Papers, these companies were controlled by the former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif. In 2017, Pakistani authorities initiated an investigation into these assets, which found that they were purchased without a mortgage between 1993 and 1995, just after Sharif reported a growth in wealth without any plausible declared source of income. In July 2017, Sharif was removed from the office after the investigation found that he had failed to disclose these properties on his official asset declaration," added TI.
Igor Shuvalov, the Russian first deputy prime minister is the alleged owner of two flats worth 11.44 million pounds at 4 Whitehall Court in London.
Sharif is not the only politician to have links to a series properties in the UK.
Other media reports have mentioned that various Pakistani politicians have also purchased properties and amassed unaccounted wealth in the UK.
India's most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim has been reportedly linked to a series of properties across the United Kingdom, according to a UK media report.
The UK newspaper compared the details from documents prepared by Indian authorities related to the records held by UK's Companies House, Land Registry and the Panama Papers.
The documents also alleged that Ibrahim's right-hand man, Muhammed Iqbal "Mirchi" Memon, amassed huge properties in the UK, such as hotels, mansions, and houses in South-East England.
Memon held at least 11 company directorships in tiling, construction and lettings firms in the UK before he died in 2013 after suffering a heart attack. He had consistently denied his involvement in Ibrahim's cartel.
Memon, also a suspect in the 1993 Mumbai attacks, had sought refuge in London after the blasts and attempts to extradite him to India had failed. He sought refuge in London after the 1993 Mumbai attacks. India has tried to extradite him but in vain.
Loopholes in Pakistani law that facilitate tax evasion and undocumented economy, according to Haroon Akhtar Khan on Dunya News with Kmran Khan:
1. Prize bonds are bearer's certificates....can be used to launder money on which taxes have not been paid.
2. Overseas remittances are considered legitimate tax-free income.
3. Income can be labeled "agriculture income" which is exempt from income tax
4. Anyone with foreign passport or residency permits like iqama can falsely claim to be non-resident (Law says they must spend over 180 days abroad) whose income in exempt from taxes.
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