LAHORE – Federal Minister for Water Resources Moonis Elahi on Tuesday rejected the claims made in Pandora Papers that he owns the offshore assets.
Taking to Twitter, the PML-Q leader said: “I do not own any offshore company nor do I have any assets which have not been declared. I refute all assertions to the contrary”.
I do not own any offshore company nor do I have any assets which have not been declared. I refute all assertions to the contrary.
— Moonis Elahi (@MoonisElahi6) October 5, 2021
The name of Elahi, who was given the portfolio of the federal minister earlier this year, is among 700 Pakistanis mentioned in the Pandora Papers, an investigation that uncovers financial secrets held by high-profile individuals across the world.
Minister for Finance Shaukat Tarin; Senator Faisal Vawda; PML-N leader Ishaq Dar’s son, Ali Dar; PPP’s Sharjeel Memon; the family of Minister for Industries and Production Khusro Bakhtiar; and PTI leader Abdul Aleem Khan was also among the persons named in the papers.
The leaked files received by ICIJ show Moonis Elahi, “a key political ally of Imran Khan’s, planned to put the proceeds from an allegedly corrupt business deal into a secret trust, concealing them from Pakistan’s tax authorities”.
A spokesman for the Elahi family told ICIJ’s media partners that, “due to political victimisation misleading interpretations and data have been circulated in files for nefarious reasons.” He maintained that the assets held by Elahi family “are declared as per applicable law”.
