ISLAMABAD: Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, on Wednesday, said the JIT report had failed to find any corroborative evidence in regard to the allegations of money laundering, tax evasion and corruption levelled by the petitioners against the prime minister.
She was speaking on a current affairs programme of at a private TV channel.
Answering a question she said the prime minister offered himself for accountability to uphold the sanctity of law and the constitution and now in future nobody would be able to escape accountability. The controversy surrounding the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) had been amply established by its own report, she added.
The PML-N, she said, had reservations about the JIT right from the beginning and those were also brought into the notice of the Supreme Court.
Marriyum said that the contents of the report were not an indictment against the prime minister as the entire report talked in terms of probabilities rather than definite conclusions or solid proofs. She said that the case still had to be decided by the judges; therefore, it would be wrong to draw any inferences from the JIT report.
She categorically said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not linked to the Panama Papers case in any way and the JIT report had also failed to find any concrete evidence to that effect.
To a question by the anchor as to whether she would like to give credit to Imran Khan for triggering a process of accountability in the country, the minister said how could any credit be given to a person who himself was trying to avoid accountability, had failed to provide money trail, was showing utmost reluctance to account for foreign funding and was challenging the jurisdiction of the ECP.
The minister observed that the PTI had failed to make any contribution in the parliament and the much hyped electoral reforms and the only thing that it did was the setting up of a circus in the country.
To a query by the anchor as to what would be the line of action of the PML-N in case the PM was disqualified by the court, the minister said that it was not appropriate to make assumptions in that regard and it should better be left to the judges.
However, she remarked that the PML-N was not considering or thinking about alternatives as it was confident that the prime minister would emerge unscathed from the Panama Papers case.
Repudiating the suggestion by the interviewer that there was a contradiction in the statement that the PM made in the National Assembly and what he said later, the minister said that the PM had made everything clear in the assembly speech, saying that if required all the documents would be presented to nullify the allegations and that was what had been done during the trial in the SC and the probe by the JIT, where all the available documents had been submitted.
