ISLAMABAD, February 21: The names of 1, 400 Pakistanis are also on the list of the world’s richest persons who have accounts in Credit Swiss Bank. It has been learnt that some of these accounts owned by Pakistanis, which are now closed, were previously open.
On average, each Pakistani has over Rs841.3 million in his account. It has also emerged that some of the accounts were opened right at the time when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was investigating corruption charges against them
Following Panama Leaks, Paradise and Pandora Papers, a German newspaper had created a storm by leaking the data of over 100 billion dollars of the government officials, heads of intelligence agencies and controversial businessmen belonging to 128 countries stashed in a Swiss bank. The man, leaking the data, first shared it with a German newspaper, which then forwarded it to Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit organisation, and 46 other newspapers.
The massive leak has the hidden wealth of clients involved in the crimes like torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption. A foreign media outlet shared the leak points to widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds.
“We can reveal how Credit Suisse repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients. They include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend, and executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine.
On the other hand, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that corruption and money laundering are the biggest problems of countries like Pakistan as people here first steal money and then send it abroad. – DNA