Sharif Family’s Offshore Accounts Revealed By Panama Paper Leaks
Monday, April 4th, 2016 10:31:17 by modousarr
A huge leak of confidential files originating from a Panamanian law firm that has its business in offshore tax sanctuaries has exposed a what-is-considered to be dirty financial involvements and dealings of the world’s famous and most powerful individuals including the king of Saudi Arabia, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iceland’s prime minister and dozens more others. Included in that list was the family of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
A data dump described as rather larger and more enormous than leaked US diplomatic cables, publicized around 2.6 terabytes of information from the internal database of Mossack Fonseca.
The information from the Panama Papers was made available on the International Consortium of Investigative journalists website which comprised one of around 100 news organisations and 300 journalists who worked on digging out the data. It discovered the offshore holdings of members of Prime Minister Sharif’s family.
Based on the documents found on the ICIJ website, the Prime Minister’s children Mariam, Hasan and Hussan “were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies”.
Mariam, in particular, is described as “the owner of British Virgin Islands-based firms Nielsen Enterprises Limited and Nescoll Limited, incorporated in 1994 and 1993”.
The address for Nielsen Enterprises was included in the documents leaked and was found to be in Saroor Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In the document which goes back to June 2012, it labeled Mariam Safdar as the ‘beneficial owner’.
ICIJ contends that “Hussain and Mariam signed a document dated June 2007 that was part of a series of transactions in which Deutsche Bank Geneva lent up to $13.8 million to Nescoll, Nielsen and another company, with their London properties as collateral.”
However, in July 2014, both companies were transferred to a different agent.
Hasan Nawaz Sharif is pronounced as “the sole director of Hangon Property Holdings Limited incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in February 2007, which acquired Liberia-based firm Cascon Holdings Establishment Limited for about $11.2 million in August 2007”.
The papers, however, are not enough proof of any misdealing. The Guardian is of the notion that using offshore arrangements is completely legal.
“There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from `raids’ by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions,” the paper explained.
Included in the leaked documents are presidents of Ukraine, UAE and Argentina, not to mention relatives of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, a former Chinese Prime Minister, Syrian leader Bashaar-Al-Assad plus the son of former United Nations Chief, Kofi Annan.
With time, the data leak is expected to reveal more information.
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