Is Pakistan a Family Business of the Sharifs?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Rejoice, o’ benumbed and befuddled people of Pakistan: there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Your messianic Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, white as a lily and pious as heavens could bless you with, has decided to stanch your bleeding wounds (or is it bleeding hearts?) by constituting a ‘judicial commission.’ Don’t fret if you get lost, once again, in trying to remember how many such ‘judicial commissions’ have preceded this one in the meandering history of Pakistan. You can bet that no one in the ‘Land of the Pure’ has memory sharp enough, or long enough, to recall the number of commissions this great land has seen in the past probing all kinds of things—from natural calamities to man-made disasters.
Rejoice, and feel grateful—bow down your heads in submission to Allah—that you’ve been blessed with a divinely-inspired leader whose sense of justice and fair-play harks back to the legacy of Adl-e-Jehangir. There’s no room to doubt that the spirit of Empereror Jehangir has found a new abode in the stately corporal girth of Nawaz Sharif. Jehangir is buried in Lahore, where NS was born and brought up, right? So why should you second guess that NS is the modern reincarnation of Emperor Jehangir famous in history for his impeccable sense of justice.
The Panama Papers—all 11 million of them—have hit the rich and the powerful with the devastating force of a hurricane, nay a Tsunami, knocking them off their, what they believed, firmly implanted feet in their national soils.
The papers, unearthed and made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) tell a story of crass greed and raw lust for money, and its natural corollary, power—political power or power of money-grabbing corporations wedded to the god of profit.
No other investigation into the arcane world of money-making and its natural ally, money-burying, ever spilled out so much as these Panama Papers. Naturally, with so much volume unearthed the trail of corruption leads to dozens of countries and involves monarchs, dictators, ‘democratic leaders’ and entrepreneurs whose favorite sport is to dodge their countries’ tax-collectors.
The so-called ‘safe-havens’ for investment and tax-shelters—Panama, British Virgin Islands, Caymen Islands, and others of their ilk—are magnets for only one kind of people: those making their money on the lam and looking for a hiding spot to stash it away with no questions asked. In other words, these are parking places for ill-begotten money and—in a more mundane parlance—laundromats to whitewash your black money.
No surprise that the Sharif clan, along with other robber-barons of Pakistan, such as the Zardaris and the Saifullahs (who top the Pakistani list of ‘investors’ with as many as 26 off-shore companies registered in their name) and other thieves masquerading as leaders-of-men, make the ‘honor’ list of Pakistanis operating out of Panama. They have tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars stashed in companies registered in Panama. They are all very honorable people in Pakistan; great families who have been lording over the land as if they were its divine sons and daughters. Who could ever think of them stooping down to the level of ordinary smugglers and traffickers in money, and God knows what else.
Panama, or any other off-shore money-shelter and tax-haven may not ask any question about the provenance of the horde stashed in their safe deposits, or companies advising these robber-barons how to ‘legalize’ their ill-begotten funds. That’s their motto: ‘no questions asked.’ And they are popular with thieves from all over because of this motto.
But the people of Pakistan have every right to question how did the Sharifs—or any other thief in the ignoble pack of jackals and rascals—get to lay their grubby hands on those millions of dollars? How was the loot ferried out of Pakistan?
And the most important question, one that Imran Khan has been asking ad nauseam, that the people of Pakistan are entitled to ask is this: why should you take your money, black or white, out of Pakistan if you claim to be servants of this land and have pretensions to be its leaders and wedded to the service of its people?
Son Hussain Nawaz, presiding over the evil money empire of the Sharifs—and operating out of the safety of London—claims, with a straight face, that when he was driven out of Pakistan by strong-man Musharraf, he had not a penny on him. Oh, really?
But then heavens took fancy to the pious and God-fearing Sharif scion and he started rolling in money ‘with the blessings of Allah.’ He started a business in exile in Saudi Arabia. What kind of business? It was a ‘modest’ steel mill.
A steel mill! But that doesn’t come cheap; it costs billions to set it up; where did you find the money for it: in the sands of Arabia? Saudi friends helped him, he says; friends of his father who had saved him from Musharraf’s wrath.
Son Nawaz has a water-tight alibi. He says he sold that Saudi steel mill at a ‘very good profit.’ And then heavens opened up for him. He had enough millions to buy expensive properties—four or six of them, doesn’t matter how many—in the trendy Park Lane area of London where flats go for millions. But he bought them in the name of off-shore companies registered in Panama and British Virgin islands. All very hunky-dory, isn’t it? The alibi is just perfect.
The two sons of NS—Hussain and Hasan—are both into the property and off-shore companies racket. They say they have no interest in politics. Fine; absolutely brilliant. Politics is dirty, while making dirty money is clean as a whistle, if you’ve powerful clan members to be your foil.
But sister Mariam is also into the game, and she has a visible, up-front, interest in politics. It’s talk of the town in Islamabad and Lahore that father Nawaz wants to groom his daughter to succeed him—and keep the dynasty going—just the way BB was groomed by ZAB and did inherit the latter’s throne, not once but twice.
But the alibi doesn’t falter. It says Mariam has only marginal interest: that of a ‘beneficiary’ just in case something happens to the two brothers. How compassionate of her; she’s doing what every sister should: be there for your brothers, just in case they needed a safety net.
NS, father and leader, thinks his work is cut out to anchor his beleaguered family and bail it out before things got really messy. Isn’t that what fathers are for?
So NS steps into the fray, majestically, a la Emperor Jehangir, to dispense justice without his loyal subjects (Rayat) beseeching him for it. He says he’s going to set up a judicial commission, headed by a retired judge of the apex court, to look into the mess.
What NS didn’t say in his, as usually flat and placid ‘address’ to the nation on TV, but wasn’t hard to decipher in between the lines, is that his intent –the only intent as far he and his extended clan is concerned—is to get a clean chit from this commission to remind his political opponents, adversaries and ‘enemies’ that the emperor isn’t without clothes.
Look at the temerity and daring of daughter Mariam. She’s pouring scorn on the likes of Imran—who have rightly pointed a finger at the Sharif clan’s shenanigans and dirty tricks—and daring them to either come up with evidence to back up their accusations or shut up and apologize.
But the finger, in the first place, was not pointed by Imran or any other nemesis of Nawaz. It was pointed by ICIJ with tons of evidence and proofs, in black and white. So why shouldn’t Imran and others demand a thorough investigation of the charges laid against the thieving clan; and why should they apologize?
Most importantly, is the nation, taken for granted for its naivety by the likes of NS, Zardari and other robber-barons going to fall for this latest legerdemain of Nawaz & Co?
No, says the pundit. The people of Pakistan may not be much into the money game of the thieves donning the mantle of their leaders, but they aren’t naïve, not by a long shot.
The people of Pakistan aren’t going to swallow the bait of this nonsense of a judicial commission. And, by the way, the first question the people may ask—and should ask—in this context is who’s going to pick the members of the commission? Who will name the ‘retired’ apex court judge, NS or the CJ of the Supreme Court?
The people of Pakistan will never fall for Nawaz’ dirty tricks: to pick a pliant, pliable, former judge to sign on the dotted lines from the Sharif clan and then use it to their defense.
And what’s this crap, this fast one the Sharifs are trying to pull on them—the people may ask—of half the clan having no interest in politics?
It isn’t a matter of interest or lack of it. People can see through this racket of convenience. One half of the clan—the so-called political one—is making sure, on the strength of its political power, that the other half, the banyas, at the far-end of the money-churning conveyor- belt is kept well supplied with the ‘laundry’ to whitewash. It’s as good and smart an arrangement as any. Mafioso can learn a thing or two from the Sharif clan.
However, there’s no bluff that can’t be called, and the time for the people of Pakistan to call the bluff of the Sharif clan has arrived. This clan, a mafia in the real sense of the term, has had laughs too many to the bank at the expense of the people of Pakistan.
But the people have reached the end of their tether. It’s their turn to have the last laugh, not to the bank but to the bar of justice. Let’s hope they aren’t disappointed. (The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
- K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
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