ISLAMABAD: Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari on Saturday rejected the reservations expressed by the opposition leaders on the committee formed to look into the Broadsheet saga.
“Investigation [in the case] would reach to a logical conclusion despite hue and cry of the opposition”, Mazari said in a statement.
Responding to the criticism on the appointment of former Supreme Court judge Azmat Saeed as the head of the inquiry commission, she further said the opposition parties did not want a judge who was aware of their corruption.
Saeed was part of the five-member bench of the apex court that announced the verdict against deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers case.
Asking the opposition about the inquiry committee is just like asking thieves about their will, she said.
On January 19, the federal cabinet decided to form a new inquiry committee on the recommendation of an inter-ministerial committee that had earlier been constituted by Prime Minister Imran Khan to look into the scandal.
Subsequently, on Friday, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) rejected the formation of the committee as an “attempt to distort the facts”.
The PML-N, on the other hand, sought what it said should be an impartial head of the inquiry committee.
In 2000, Broadsheet LLC — a company registered in the Isle of Man, tax heaven in the UK, and engaged by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) — helped the government and the newly-established accountability agency track down foreign assets of some 150 Pakistan nationals including members of the Sharif family acquired through ill-gotten wealth.
The agreement was terminated by the bureau in 2003, after which Broadsheet filed a claim with the High Court of Justice, London against Pakistan, seeking the award of $28.7 million.
The now-defunct firm’s chief Kaveh Moussavi, in an interview, had claimed Sharif through a frontman offered him a $25 million bribe to drop the probe in his foreign assets.
