ISLAMABAD: Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar on Tuesday said the inconclusive report of Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was full of gaps, weaknesses and faults.
Speaking at a press conference flanked by Railways Minister Saad Rafique, he said, "I cannot understand why the JIT failed to reconcile the financial statements. Either it has no capacity or it was malafide."
He said Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif did not own any offshore company and the professionals in the legal team of Sharif family were studying every aspect of the JIT report.
"There were a lot of weaknesses and unsigned documents generated by the JIT. There are many papers in the report which cannot even be read. Many papers in the report are unbelievable."
He said the JIT itself wrote to the Supreme Court to decide whether the papers collected by it had any evidentiary value or not.
"We should move patiently as the JIT report is inconclusive."
He said due process demanded that defendants in the Panama Papers case should be confronted with evidence.
"According to our professional team, nothing is directly reflected on the prime minister."
Ishaq Dar explained in detail his wealth and income tax returns during the years 1981 to 2002 and onwards.
He said it was wrong to say that he did not file tax returns from 1981 to 2002 and subsequent years.
During the regime of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) took away his tax record in 2002, he added.
He said when he came to know about the missing tax returns from the JIT, he sent the record available with Federal Board of Revenue to JIT but this fact was not mentioned in the report.
The missing record in custody of NAB was also recovered and delivered to the JIT, he said.
The minister said the JIT did not ask him about many issues, but it simply levelled allegations against him in the report.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.