A Pakistani court issued arrest warrants for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday in two corruption cases triggered by the Panama Papers leak.<\/p>\n
Sharif was disqualified from office for life by the Supreme Court following an investigation into his family\u2019s wealth, almost a year before his term was to end and ahead of the general elections scheduled in 2018.<\/p>\n
The former Pakistan PM\u2009is currently in London with his wife as she undergoes cancer treatment, and has not returned to Pakistan since he was indicted in the corruption allegations earlier this month.<\/p>\n
The verdict was handed down unanimously by a five-member bench in a case connected to allegations stemming from disclosures in the so-called Panama Papers last year that said his family\u2019s wealth was more than his known sources of income. The top court also ordered criminal cases be opened against Sharif and his family.<\/p>\n
A major expos\u00e8 in April 2016 sent shockwaves through the top offices of the nations named in the Panama Papers, triggering a series of probes across the globe.<\/p>\n
The documents were leaked from Mossack Fonseca \u2014 a Panamanian law firm.<\/p>\n
The people it allegedly exposed ranged from political leaders such as Sharif, Russian President Vladimir Putin, President of Argentina, Iceland\u2019s Prime Minister and the King of Saudi Arabia as well as 500 Indians including Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.<\/p>\n
The documents, from around 214,000 offshore entities covering almost 40 years, show how the company helped its clients launder money, dodge sanctions and evade tax.<\/p>\n
The leak linked Sharif\u2019s family to lucrative offshore businesses. Three of Sharif\u2019s four children \u2014 Maryam and his sons Hasan and Hussein \u2014 were implicated in the papers.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the case is the legitimacy of the funds used by the Sharif family to purchase several high-end London properties via offshore companies.<\/p>\n
The PML-N insists the wealth was acquired legally through Sharif family businesses in Pakistan and the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Pakistan\u2019s top court took up the case in October 2016 on petitions filed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Awami Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami and reserved the verdict in February after conducting hearings on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
In April, the Supreme Court declared there was \u201cinsufficient evidence\u201d to oust Sharif and set up a six-member team to probe the allegations. The investigation concluded a \u201csignificant disparity\u201d existed between Sharif and family\u2019s declared wealth and its known sources of income. The team submitted its report to the court on July 10.<\/p>\n
It recommended the filing of a new corruption case against them.<\/p>\n
The findings sparked an uproar, including the claim that documents regarding Maryam and her link to some of the family\u2019s London properties were \u2018falsified\u2019\u2014 dated 2006, but typed in Microsoft\u2019s Calibri font, which was not released for commercial use until 2007.<\/p>\n
The Sharifs and their allies consistently rejected the claims against them, with his ruling PML-N party this month dismissing the investigation team\u2019s report as \u201ctrash\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Pakistani court issued arrest warrants for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday in two corruption cases triggered by the Panama Papers leak. Sharif was disqualified from office for life by the Supreme Court following an investigation into his family\u2019s wealth, almost a year before his term was to end and ahead of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8549,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8547\/revisions\/8549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}