Tough times for sitting leaders of nations …
LIVE: Supreme Court disqualifies Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in unanimous verdict
Supreme Court Justice Asif Saeed Khosa started the court’s announcement of its verdict on the Panama Papers case shortly after 12:00pm.
Apologising for the delay, he gave the podium to Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, who headed the apex court’s implementation bench following its April 20 order on the case, to announce the judgement
Justice Khan said the bench had recommended that all material collected by the JIT would be sent to an accountability court within six weeks, and that cases would be opened against Captain Muhammad Safdar, Maryam, Hassan and Hussain Nawaz as well as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. A judgement should be announced within 30 days, he said.
One judge will oversee the implementation of this order.
The prime minister was additionally disqualified from holding his office. The judges ruled that the prime minister had been dishonest to parliament and the courts and could not be deemed fit for his office.
The judgement was unanimous.
This is the third time the prime minister has been unable to complete his term in the chief executive’s office. It is unclear as of the moment who will be appointed to take over the post till the next general elections, which are scheduled for 2018.
Those Who Are (and Are Not) Sheltered From the Panama Papers | Stratfor – April 2017|
On April 3, the Panama Papers hit media outlets around the world, and the fallout was swift. A prime minister lost his job, and other global leaders are under mounting pressure to account for their actions. But the effects of the leaks are not evenly spread; the documents contained far more information about the offshore activities of individuals in the developing world than in the developed world. Whatever the reasons for the imbalance, it will likely limit the papers’ impact. In the developing world, long histories of corruption have dulled the public’s sensitivity to scandal, and repressive governments leave little room for popular backlash.
So although less information was released on Western leaders, it is already doing more damage. Iceland’s leader has left his post, and relatively minor revelations have had a disporportionately large impact in the United Kingdom and France. Meanwhile, in the developing world, the Panama Papers’ effects have been most strongly felt in the former Soviet Union, a region in which political tensions were already high. The leaks’ results have been more mixed in China, where they have provided new targets for the anti-corruption drive already underway but have also implicated figures close to the administration’s upper ranks.
This is only the beginning. The Panama Papers are the largest information dump of their kind, and the information that has been released so far appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. They are also the latest in a string of public leaks that seem to be happening more and more frequently. As revelations continue to surface, calls for greater global transparency will only get louder.
