ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Sunday that his government would investigate about all Pakistani citizens whose names are mentioned in the Pandora Papers and if any wrongdoing is established appropriate action would be taken against them.

The prime minister tweeted following the release of Pandora Papers: "We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion and corruption and laundered out to financial "havens".

The UN SG's Panel FACTI calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens.

The prime minister said that his over-two decades' struggle has been premised on the belief that countries are not poor but corruption causes poverty because money is diverted from being invested in the people.

'Pandora Papers' could further validate PM Imran's stance on money-laundering: Fawad

Also, this resource-theft causes devaluation, leading to thousands of poverty-related deaths, he added. Just like the East India Company plundered the wealth of India, ruling elites of developing world are doing the same, he said, adding that unfortunately, the rich states are neither interested in preventing this large-scale plunder nor in repatriating this looted money.

Prime Minister called on the international community to treat this grave injustice as similar to the climate change crisis. "If unchecked, inequalities between rich and poor states would increase as poverty rises in the latter, which in turn, will lead to a flood of economic migration from the poor to the rich states, causing further economic and social instability across the globe," the PM said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021