Observer Report
London
Former finance minister and a close aide of ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Ishaq Dar said he owns only one property in Pakistan and that too, has been seized by the government.
“I have my main residence in Pakistan which has been taken over by this regime,” he said, hitting out at the incumbent PTI-led government. “I haven’t gotten too many properties. My net worth is what has been (inaudible)”.
The PML-N leader, speaking in BBC News’ show “HARDtalk”, claimed that he had declared all his assets in his tax returns and that he stood for transparency.
Responding to a question about the assets owned by his family, Dar said that his sons were financially independent and that he does not provide for them, confirming that they owned a villa. When asked whether he was in Britain to escape accountability in Pakistan, Dar replied in the negative. He said that the “corruption rhetoric” has been used throughout Pakistan’s history by dictators and the current government was doing the same.
“I can prove that I have done nothing [wrong] and I have all the evidence [to support this]. My name was not mentioned in the Panama Papers,” said Dar. Dar, lashing out at anti-corruption watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau, accused it of targeting the government’s opponents. “It lost its integrity a long time ago,” he said of the anti-graft body, adding that he had said the same when he was a minister during a press conference.
