Tax evasion and money laundering are two significant features of Pakistan’s corruption mafia, who are running a parallel black economy. Both these criminal activities have become a norm for the powerful elite in Pakistan, which live head and shoulders above the loop of the law. It is tantamount to a popular sport of the privileged class hoarding 80 per cent resources of the country that is reeling under foreign debts amounting to $60 billion. Out of 180 million people living in Pakistan, around 2.2 million pay their taxes. Let’s see it from another angle. In other parts of the world, you will be pleasantly surprised to note that the rich people pay much more than their due share of taxes by sharing a large part of their profit with the lesser fortunate segments of society through charities and donations.
Take the example of America. There are over 50 billionaires in the US that include Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, having a fortune of $54 billion and $47 billion respectively. But what makes these two men great is that they have donated a substantial amount, over $20 billion, to charitable organisations. It is because these rich belong to corporate class unlike their Pakistani counterparts, who are mostly politicians. Our billionaires, on the other hand, are haunted by an inherent fear of losing their fortune due to the lack of objectivity and transparency.
Over the years, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and the Customs authorities that oversee Pakistan’s Anti Money Laundering laws enforcement efforts have failed to catch the bigger fish involved in the flight of fortune from Pakistan. .
With the new millionaires that emerged on Pakistan’s political horizon in early1990s, a new trend of ‘flight of fortune’ was witnessed in the society. It became a stereo-type strategy for the powerful elite to diversify their business outside Pakistan to work as a shock absorber in times of trouble. The height of contradiction is that those going on foreign investment-hunting trips to fetch business in the country are actually people who prefer to keep their own savings abroad. According to estimates, more than a trillion of financial assets are transferred to alien lands by a handful of fortune makers. Sources say that the two richest politicians presently playing with the destiny of Pakistan have stashed enough money abroad to pay off all our foreign debts.
Voices of dissent are echoing in America, where taxpayers are criticising their government for creating more millionaires in Pakistan through showering excessive aid that is presumed to make its way to Swiss banks. Former US Ambassador Anne Patterson bitterly criticised the Pakistani tax structure during several speeches at Pakistan’s National Defense University during her stay in Pakistan; but to no avail. Even US diplomacy was ineffective in prodding Pakistan into taxing its wealthy. Pakistani millionaires should follow the footsteps of Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates and offer some of their wealth to charitable organisations to help bridge widening income disparities in Pakistani society.
I would like to quote Winston Churchill who said in the House of Commons in 1947: “Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
