Musadik Malik responds to Panama Papers documents released today
Malik says there's nothing new in documents, they prove nothing and have no significance
LAHORE, ISLAMABAD: (Web Desk) - Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif s spokesperson Musadik Malik on Monday responded to the documents released earlier today by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) regarding the ownership of Sharif family s offshore companies.
Musadik Malik said that there was nothing new in the documents released today as they proved nothing and had no significance either. He said that the documents contradicted nothing that the Sharif family had already been saying. He said that all the documents, including this one, had already been presented before the cort. He added that all the documents of the ownership of the flats have already been submitted to the court and they ll be duely argued upon as well.
Here is what he had to say about the documents released earlier today:
"When in 2006, during January and February, the ownership of these flats was transferred from Qatari company to Hussain Nawaz Sharif, the deed was ready and Maryam Nawaz Sharif was sending the instructions regarding it. There is a process called ‘Know your customer’ in banking terminology. Under this process, a ‘know your customer’ document was sent from Maryam’s bank (Samba Bank) to validate that Maryam Nawaz Sharif was an account holder with them. And this deed was sent in February 2006 too.
Samba Bank had issued this document for the transactions to be made during January and February 2006; and there is nothing wrong with this. This is exactly our point. We have been continuously saying that the deal was finalised during the first two months of 2006, and this paper also says the same.
Moreover, although we are yet to verify the document presented today, it is pertinent to mention here that this document, Personal Information Form, also has six categories. One of those categories is ‘Authorised Agent’. Our stance is that Maryam Nawaz Sharif is actually an ‘authorised agent’ in this entire deal and one of the categories on the document presented today is also titled ‘authorised agent’. So where’s the problem?
The third document is the one from 2006 on which a forged signature of Maryam Nawaz Sharif can be seen. We have already rejected that document. It has been brought up tens of times and we can again go into the same debate if you want to but there’s no point bringing it up every few days."
The documents released earlier today by IZ Investigativ:
For those in #Pakistan who doubt the role of the prime ministers daughter Mariam Safdar in #panamapapers - some of the docs. Judge yourself. pic.twitter.com/DCd45aTxTK
— SZ Investigativ (@SZ_Investigativ) January 23, 2017
Bastian Obermayer, a member of ICIJ, also said in one of his tweets that the documents weren t new and the purpose behind releasing them was to make them public.
We re not on either side in case of Sharif Family #panamapapers & didn t say the docs are "new". But we believe key docs should be public.
— Bastian Obermayer (@b_obermayer) January 23, 2017