Intelligence agency visited UK to collect evidence on Panama leaks

ISLAMABAD: A team of an intelligence agency secretly visited the United Kingdom to collect evidence amid the Panama leaks controversy.



According to the sources, the evidence collected by the intelligence team contains startling facts. The sources said that Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director General Aftab Sultan sent a 12-member team to London to secretly investigate the Panama leaks saga.



Sources said that IB Joint Director Fawad was heading the team, which visited various places and offices to collect evidence. The team stayed in the UK for 12 days. IB Director Shujaat Ullah Qureshi was also with the team, the sources said.



The sources said that after the return of this team information about offshore properties of various people was leaked to the media. The sources said that documentary evidence collected by this team was handed over to the government and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan admitted after this that he owned offshore properties, but long before the Panama Papers exposed them.



According to the sources, the IB team checked the documents of the Sharif family for authentication. The documents presented by Hussain Nawaz at various media forums were also checked and a report was submitted to the IB chief.



A government official however said, “We have no information about IB team’s visit to London and other cities. If an IB team visited London, we will have to check whether it is IB’s mandate or not.”



It may be mentioned that Panama Papers investigations are yet to be started as the government and opposition parties have failed to formulate joint terms of reference (ToRs).



The Pakistan Tahreeke-e-Insaf (PTI) has summoned a joint meeting of opposition parties on July 19 to finalise the future course of action over the Panama leaks.



Earlier, names of 259 Pakistanis with links to offshore companies were surfaced in one of the world’s biggest ever data leaks through an online searchable database made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).