The Bill O’Reillys of the World
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is reported to have signed up with a number of assets-tracing firms for recovery of the billions that have been looted from Pakistan. Since NAB officials have been going to London and New York, the safe bet is that most of the agreements, believed to be on percentage basis without a contingency or mobilization fee for expenses, have been signed up with western firms. This is indeed very welcome news and though one has reservations about the credibility and integrity of some elements associated with NAB, one must congratulate them on this initiative. No doubt some well-known foreign firms have a tremendous capability to uncover assets, however NAB must be careful and blacklist those firms who dragged their feet for reasons unknown when they were previously employed by Pakistan. The recovery itself will be a long, legal process that takes some doing because the accounts and assets are mostly never directly in the name of the person who stole the money but in a myriad number of off-shore firms, names of close relatives, etc. The financial structure is done with the aim of avoiding discovery. One owner of US$ 500 million plus in assets abroad claims ingenuously that these are all his wife’s business and since she is British, she is not accountable to Pakistan. One may well ask, what fortune did his wife inherit and/or what business was she engaged in to successfully acquire all this wealth abroad?
Due credit must be given to NAB for nabbing one of this country’s virtually untouchables, the owner of a huge business empire that specializes in the sophisticated evasion of taxes, custom and excise duties. Protected by a combination of bureaucrats on their payroll (including some from the investigating agencies) as well as brilliant lawyers who sell their conscience for a fat fee (and should themselves be investigated for evading taxes, since their honoraria is received in cash and mostly in foreign exchange), these characters have acquired such power and influence that they have actually managed to have a beach within the precincts of the city reclaimed using the cover of creating of a public park, probably the first in the world and without a murmur of protest from any environmentalist. Another major tax-evader who was being pursued by a previous CBR Chairman is flourishing on the basis of his “connections” in the present arrangement. Coincidentally, these characters jointly own a major western franchise, a convenient arrangement not only to launder black money but also to make their reputations kosher. One generation later nobody will remember how they made their fortunes. And a government minister who knows (or should know) has the effrontery to call these people as young “dynamic entrepreneurs”. The fact that at least one of the groups has been hauled up by NAB, despite their professed “connections”: speaks well of the integrity of the accountability process, no doubt the days for the others are also numbered, subject to the influence they wield, of course.
