ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday said the Qatari prince should be jailed for writing a fake letter to save Nawaz Sharif and family in the Panamagate.
He was addressing a press conference. He was flanked by PTI leaders Jahangir Khan Tareen and Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Kaptaan claimed that the letter by the Qatari prince was a fraud and the PTI would expose it.
The PTI chairman said Maryam Safdar was not the trustee, but a beneficial owner of the companies and in reality, the Mayfair flats were also owned by her.
The cricketer-turned-politician said that on every platform, Maryam had claimed that she lived with her dad, which only meant that the wealth belonged to Nawaz.
He said the PTI had collected evidence in the past couple of days. To a question, the skipper said that it was Nawaz Sharif’s responsibility to prove his innocence.
He said; “It’s not the responsibility of a political party to submit evidence. Instead, the state institutions are responsible for bringing evidence to the court.”
Imran said Nawaz Sharif’s money had been laundered abroad and Maryam Safdar had acted as his cover. He challenged the government to sue the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for naming the Sharifs in the Panama leaks if they were ‘innocent’.
“It is not my money but the money of the Pakistani nation which has been stolen,” said the skipper.
He said he has full confidence in the Supreme Court bench that is hearing the Panama scandal.
“We will accept every decision of the court since we have a full confidence in the bench. Nawaz Sharif has lied both on the assembly floor as well as in the court.”
He also questioned the claims made by Maryam Safdar in a document she filed in the court regarding her asset details.
PTI General Secretary Jehangir Khan Tareen led the party’s presentation of ‘evidence’ it has gathered on the case, with focus on an alleged exchange of emails between Mossack Fonseca and Minerva Trust and Corporate Services Ltd.
The emails, published by the ICIJ as part of the Panama leaks, appear to show Maryam as the independent owner of both offshore companies.
Kaptaan said that after seeing these documents, no one should argue that the PTI never submitted concrete evidence to substantiate its claims.
Tareen claimed that the rulers were lying in every piece of document they submitted regarding the case. He said according to the letter of the Qatari prince, a settlement took place in 2006. “Maryam Nawaz is the central figure in the Panama Papers case,” he alleged.
