- –World Bank says its report doesn’t mention ‘money laundering’ or any ‘individual’
- –NAB says it took notice of media reports of money laundering of $4.9 billion, is verifying complaint
- –State Bank of Pakistan had already rejected the report in 2016
- –NAB spokesman says if the report was in correct, why did SBP not seek clarification from WB?
ISLAMABAD: Hours after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) ordered an inquiry into the alleged money laundering of $4.9 into India by former premier Nawaz Sharif and his aides, the World Bank (WB) issued a statement terming the reports of alleged money laundering as ‘incorrect’.
“In the past day, there have been media reports citing the World Bank’s Remittances and Migration Report of 2016. These media reports were incorrect,” the statement said.
It also referred to a statement by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) that rejected estimates of US $4.9 billion remittances from Pakistan to India on September 21, 2016.
Earlier in the day, NAB had ordered an inquiry against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and others for allegedly laundering $4.9 billion to India. The NAB chairman had taken notice of a media report that claimed that the incident was mentioned in the World Bank’s Migration and Remittance Book 2016.
The chairman of the bureau has taken notice of media report which made the claims, said a statement by NAB. Without giving details, the media report in question claims that the incident was cited in the World Bank’s Migration and Remittance Book 2016.
It further claimed that the money was laundered to the Indian Finance Ministry resulting in a decline in Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves, while those of India, prospered.
The case against Nawaz Sharif is preceded by four corruption cases at the accountability court, including three regarding the Panama Papers, as well as a NAB inquiry for the alleged illegal expansion of the road that leads to his estate in Jati Umra.
It may be noted here that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had clearly rejected a report that suggested the transfer of $4.9 billion from Pakistan to India as remittances, stating that it was in contradiction of known facts.
In a statement issued on September 21, 2016, SBP had rejected the estimates of $4.9 billion remittances from Pakistan to India. “This number is given in Migration and Remittances Factbook 2016 prepared by the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD).”
The SBP press release added that the Factbook data on bilateral remittance flows were estimates and not the actual flows which are based on a number of assumptions about the migrant stock, per worker income, etc.
“The methodology used to estimate these numbers is based on a World Bank’s Working Paper by Ratha, Dilip, and William Shaw ( South-South migration and remittances. No. 102. World Bank Publications, 2007). This methodology has serious issues, particularly in case of Pakistan, as also acknowledged by the authors themselves stating that “Interpreting the meaning of migrant stocks also presents some difficulties. Pakistanis in India and Russians in Ukraine became migrants following the partition of the original country.”
The State Bank thus concluded that the study was clearly flawed as the migrants at the time of Indo-Pak partition in 1947 had become Pakistani citizens. The State Bank categorically rejected such estimates as there were contrary to facts and did not make sense.
According to the State Bank, the actual Balance of Payments data showed that outflow of workers’ remittances from Pakistan to India was $116,000 in 2016 and the inflows from India to Pakistan were $329,000. The value of Pakistan’s exports to India was $425 million, while imports from India amounted to $1,415 million during the same year.
It is pertinent to mention here that a report published by World Bank, surprising as it may seem, said that Indians who have migrated to Pakistan were expected to remit back home a staggering $4.9 billion in 2015, making Pakistan the fourth largest source of India’s remittances that year.
On the other hand, NAB spokesman has said that the bureau has taken notice of the alleged media report and ordered complaint verification. He said that the accountability watchdog is committed to its policy of seeing the ‘case’ not the ‘face’, and ‘accountability for all’.
“If the WB report was not correct, did the SBP sought clarification from the World Bank and asked for correction of the report?” the spokesman asked. “If the World Bank report is not correct, why have they not changed the figure of $4.9 billion from Pakistan in its report?” he added.
Meanwhile, Nawaz’s daughter Maryam Nawaz took to Twitter and mocked the alleged money laundering allegations saying, “I think the $5bn were sent to India by tying them to wings of pigeons and NAB would have caught all these pigeons as witnesses.”
مجھے لگتا ہے یہ ۵ ارب ڈالرز کبوتروں کے پروں سے باندھ کر انڈیا بھجوائےگئے اور سارے کبوتر نیب نے پکڑ لیے ہونگے اور احتساب عدالت میں بطور گواہ
— Maryam Nawaz Sharif (@MaryamNSharif) May 8, 2018
