ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal while briefingreporter after meeting of Standing Committee on Law and Justice on Thursdaydisclosed talks were ongoing with UAE and Swiss governments to retrieveinformation about Pakistani’s having billion dollars of assets abroad.
Afzal said this information about bank accounts is being retrieved toensure these Pakistani’s are brought into the tax net, reported an Englishdaily.
He said negotiations were underway in Switzerland and Dubai for retrievalof information regarding properties and other assets of Pakistani’s.
The Minister of State for Finance pointed out Pakistan, Switzerland and UAEwere members of Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)and as per its rules, all member countries were required to share dataabout properties and assets of citizens of each other’s countries.
He added that process of information exchange among OECD member countrieshad been initiated from the 1st of January 2018.
Due to the OECD charter, Mr. Afzal stated the authorities would be able toretrieve information regarding those 500 Pakistani citizens named in PanamaPapers scandal in 2016 and properties and bank accounts they house.
Minister of State for Finance said those citizens who had kept their moneyabroad would be given an opportunity to legalize their wealth by paying anappropriate tax as per an amnesty scheme being worked upon by thegovernment.
He added the amnesty scheme being worked upon was being finalized andfine-tuned to ensure it is more advantageous for the people and thegovernment.