ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan said on Thursday that Qatar’s former prime minister Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al Thani would be jailed if he appeared before the Supreme Court (SC) to authenticate the letter he had sent to rescue Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panamagate.
“If the Qatari prince doesn’t want to go to prison, he should not come to Pakistan,” he said at a press conference at his residence in Banigala.
Mr Khan asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to submit evidence if he was not involved in money laundering and had sent money abroad through legal channels to purchase properties in London.
He said that the letter of the Qatari prince had proved to be false as the prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz was the owner of the London property.
“The Qatari Prince’s letter is false, I don’t know which prince will come to their defence next,” the PTI chief said.
He alleged that Nawaz Sharif was involved in money laundering since he had transferred money abroad through illegal channels and established overseas companies in the name of his children. “Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s affidavit is a documentary evidence of Nawaz Sharif’s money laundering.”
He said that the government had been trying to hide the Sharif family’s corruption for the past eight months and “the entire (federal) cabinet is on their toes in an attempt to hide the prime minister’s corruption”.
Mr Khan said that the Sharif family had been categorically identified in the Panama Papers’ revelations and it was issuing contradictory statements ever since the Panama Leaks came to the fore. “If the Panama Papers were wrong why the Sharifs have not moved court against the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,” he asked.
In a democratic system, Mr Khan said, the opposition was not responsible for providing evidence for identification of illegal acts whereas the government had to respond to questions raised by the opposition.
He said that Maryam Nawaz had claimed that no overseas assets were in her family’s name but the documents submitted to the court on Wednesday had proved otherwise.
