Transcription
[Music] [Music] The amount of money laundered every year is estimated at 2 to 5% of global GDP. 2% of global GDP is roughly equal to the combined GDP of Turkey, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Over half a trillion dollars flows out of developing countries each year. Much of this money flows into Western economies via complex offshore structures.
In 1952, the future Kenyan president, Jomo Kenyatta, is imprisoned by the British colonial authorities. He becomes a symbol of Kenya's struggle for independence. Kenyatta is viewed as Kenya's father of independence, so to speak. He used to go by the name John Stone Kamau. He used to be a water meter reader in the colonial government's Municipal Council. He was also fairly well-spoken. I believe that's part of the reason why he was selected from amongst the political intelligence.
Upon his release from detention, the near-penniless Kenyatta becomes a close friend of the last British governor of Kenya, Malcolm MacDonald. In 1963, Kenyatta is elected as the first Prime Minister and later President of independent Kenya, while Malcolm MacDonald becomes the British High Commissioner. The government and civil service of the new country is comprised primarily of what the British called loyalists. Post-independence, Britain retains a number of military sites in Kenya. Today, Britain trains six infantry battalions in Kenya every year.
Sixty years after independence, the Kenyatta family is one of the wealthiest in Kenya. The Kenyatta family have vast investments in land across the country, right down to the coast, all the way up to what was called the White Highlands. They own the biggest milk company in Kenya. They own one of Kenya's biggest banks. They have a chain of hotels. They're building a sub-city right now just outside the bounds of Nairobi City.
There's always been an open question about how Kenyatta was able to become such a rich person, just one or two years after becoming president. His salary at the time doesn't match the kind of wealth that he had. There have been memoirs written by people from his administration that say that he essentially would engage in land grabs of very, very prime pieces of land owned by members of the settler community, etc.
A declassified CIA report noted that funds provided by foreign governments in order to pay for the redistribution of land from colonial settlers to landless Kenyans had allegedly been used by the Kenyattas and their associates to buy land for themselves. Today, the Kenyatta family are the biggest landowners in Kenya, holding over 500,000 acres of prime land across the country, while many former Kenyan freedom fighters and their families who fought specifically for the return of their land received nothing.
Jomo Kenyatta passed away in 1978. His son, Uhuru Kenyatta, followed his father into politics. The country's president, Uhuru Kenyatta, was among the world's rich who were named this week in the Pandora Papers. According to the Pandora Papers, Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta and six members of his family have been linked to 13 offshore companies. What was revealed is that the family had invested in offshore structures for, if you're including the extended family, as early as the mid-70s. Uhuru Kenyatta was listed as a beneficiary of a trust that, so to speak, belonged to his mother upon her death.
Uhuru Kenyatta claimed to be an advocate of transparency, and cracking down on corruption was a central theme of his term in office. "This dragon, this beast called corruption, is an animal that we intend to slay," he said. President Uhuru Kenyatta welcomed the leakage of the Pandora Papers, saying, "The publication of the papers will go a very long way in enhancing the financial transparency and openness required in the country and around the globe."
In Kenya, two-thirds of the population live in poverty on less than $3.20 per day. 70% of Kenyan families are chronically vulnerable due to poor nutrition, food insecurity, and preventable diseases. Kenyan law requires the president to provide a list of financial interests to the Ministry of Finance each year. "What we own, what we have, is open to the public, and we declare every year. And I've always said, if there is an instance where somebody can say that what we have done or obtained has not been legitimate, say so. We are ready to face any court," he said.
"He said that he's made his wealth declarations, but we've never seen them. Secondly, it can be that families of politically exposed persons don't have to declare their wealth. Between the year that he got in 2013 and today, those have been very good years for the Kenyatta's wealth. There is this feeling that the Kenyattas, as well as other political elites, they have become fabulously wealthy at a time when Kenya is suffering from the worst levels of corruption that it has seen in years. How it's been described is that there's been one rule for the elite, especially the elite that's connected to power, and another for everybody else. So that's what the perception is. I think I'll leave it at that."
The Kenyattas are what are known as politically exposed persons, or PEPs. A politically exposed person is someone who holds a public function and, as a result, presents a higher risk of being involved in bribery or corruption. Politically exposed persons, in theory, have access, potential access, to public funds within particular countries. Our investigations have come up with lots of evidence that, unfortunately, there are PEPs who have been stealing public funds and moving it into places like the UK, either to hide it, to clean it, or to spend it. So PEPs are incredibly significant when it comes to the money laundering picture. And that's why professionals in the regulated sector in the private sector are supposed to do enhanced due diligence whenever they have a client who is a politically exposed person.
Unfortunately, there are multiple cases that we have found where that clearly hasn't happened. I could think of one former political official who was accused of embezzling a lot of money. This was splashed all over the internet. Within the five years following that, this person was able to open several UK bank accounts, to cut a few more mortgages on UK houses, opened a UK company.
"Can you share who that person was?" "Because of SLAPP suits in the UK, which I'm sure you're really aware of. We're very aware of them. Unfortunately, I have to literally lie-check everything I say, learn it like a script, and then say it. So I can't even if that is already in the public domain."
"Yeah, it's a big issue. Journalists like yourselves, NGOs like us, are often targeted by very, very expensive lawyers in London, unfortunately, who take on dubious clients and basically pursue, pursue NGOs, pursue journalists for daring to mention the corrupt dealings of these people."
The Kenyattas are not the only developing world political dynasty who have amassed wealth and land beyond their known sources of income. Since coming to power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Aliyev family of Azerbaijan have accumulated a vast fortune and business empire. Azerbaijan is a major crude oil and natural gas producer. Fossil fuels are so abundant that surface oil deposits have burned for centuries. The UK is the largest foreign investor in Azerbaijan, making up over half of all foreign investment.
The Aliyev family is the richest family in Azerbaijan. They came to power in 1993 when Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB general and Secretary General of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic, orchestrated a coup. In 1993, Heydar Aliyev seized power in a coup. Shortly before Heydar Aliyev's death, his son Ilham Aliyev took over as president and has remained in power ever since. BP arrived in Azerbaijan in 1992 and, after the coup, signed a secret deal with the new president. Today, BP is the largest foreign oil company in Azerbaijan.
The political opposition has always said that British Petroleum was responsible for the state coup. "They brought Heydar Aliyev to power. I remember in 1993, during that difficult electoral and coup period, the British private security companies were doing something in Azerbaijan. Maybe they came to protect someone, high-level officials of British Petroleum, or maybe they came to help protect members of the Aliyev family. We don't know. Nobody knows what is in this contract between British Petroleum and Aliyev. It's like the biggest state secret in Azerbaijan." On its website, BP calls this contract "The Contract for the New Century."
The Aliyev family have vast business interests in Azerbaijan. Who is the owner of five biggest commercial banks in Azerbaijan? It's the Aliyev family. Who is the owner of the biggest private transportation company? It's the Aliyev family. Who is the owner of the biggest five-star hotel networks in Azerbaijan? Again, it's the Aliyev family. They privatized the state's biggest banks, and after they made themselves owners of these banks, they started using these banks to loan their money.
Heads of state and other major figures have deposited vast assets offshore. It's according to a review of nearly 12 million files from around the world. It's the latest report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Pandora Papers expose a London property empire worth nearly £700 million, amassed by the ruling family of Azerbaijan.
"So, one of the properties that we looked at was on Conduit Street in central London. This property was bought in 2009 by a company owned by one of the associates of the presidency of Azerbaijan, and then this property was basically sold shortly after that to the daughter, who was 19 at the time, Leyla Aliyeva. And eventually, it was sold to the Crown Estate, which is, you know, owned by Queen Elizabeth II. The Aliyevs made a profit of £31 million. There was another property in Mayfair, Maddox Street, which was transferred to Heydar Aliyev. He was the 11-year-old son of the president of Azerbaijan. So, you know, overnight, the tenants started paying their rent to an 11-year-old boy in Kensington. There was a cluster of properties in one development called Thornwood Gardens over here in Kensington."
When the Italian newspaper La Stampa asked Ilham Aliyev about the Pandora Papers revelations, he replied, "Some forces in the West try to use these kinds of insinuations or half-truths in order to discredit the image of Azerbaijan and undermine Azerbaijan's position. They want to accuse us, they want to subordinate us, they want to impose their will on us. And I say no, I will defend Azerbaijan, its sovereignty, its independence, its choice until the end of my life. And all these kinds of dirty stories mean nothing to me and to the people of Azerbaijan."
In the Pandora Papers, we saw dozens of politicians and world leaders, current and former world leaders, with wealth offshore. Offshore service providers are supposed to conduct enhanced due diligence and really scrutinize the sources of wealth of the politically connected people that they provide services to. The Pandora Papers revealed that offshore service providers did not conduct sufficient due diligence on their politically exposed clients.
"You know, there was some like Googling, running names through risk databases and things like that. The people conducting these checks are really doing checks to be seen to be doing checks."
"At the moment, it's very hard to pursue large banks and big firms for money laundering offenses because we do not have a failure to prevent money laundering offense within UK law, which Transparency International very much believes we should have. Our research identified 582 UK individuals and firms who were involved in major money laundering cases."
"There are people who will turn a blind eye to anything they may discover or proceed anyway. And those who maybe don't do enhanced due diligence when they should, you will find individuals and firms that will actually deliberately go out to try and get the services of those who are potentially involved in corruption and criminality because it's big business, it's big money."
"There are 84,000 UK properties that are owned anonymously. Now, of course, some of those will be owned with legitimate money, but it's quite possible that a lot will be owned with suspicious funds."
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is an unusual place. It is not just the prevalence of stray cats that make it unusual, because even more prevalent than cats are police and security officials. There is a security official on every street, on every corner, even underneath bridges. Ornate parks of marble and sandstone are scattered throughout the city. Only in the suburbs and on the edges of Baku is the fairy tale confronted by reality.
In 2005, Azerbaijan signed the UN Convention Against Corruption. One of the requirements of that treaty was to implement financial declarations for all state officials. Parliament ratified the treaty, yet until today, 17 years later, nobody is declaring their wealth. The first journalist who exposed the huge corruption in the government was killed at the front door of his house. After that, we saw that all journalists who spoke about stolen assets, they have a problem. They are put in jail. Their lives become extremely difficult. They are prosecuted. They are blackmailed with private family issues.
The National Crime Agency, or NCA, is tasked with investigating money laundering in the UK. "I think there are reasonable grounds for the NCA to investigate assets owned by or linked to the Aliyev family in the UK. It's not always entirely clear how the presidential family has made their wealth. Some of that money, at least, came through money laundering systems, laundromats, which are known to have funneled illicit money out of Azerbaijan."
"We wanted to ask the NCA why they had not opened an investigation on the Aliyev family's assets in the UK." The NCA did not agree to speak to us. "When I was in Azerbaijan, the British Embassy occasionally invited us for breakfast with the ambassador and other British officials. They would tell us that they were afraid that if we did a strong investigation, we would put ourselves in trouble. They never gave us any support to investigate corruption."
British politicians, including British politicians in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, tried to wash the negative image of Aliyev. "You know who is the biggest lobbyist in Azerbaijan from the UK? It's the son of the Queen, Prince Andrew, Epstein's friend. He is also a friend of Aliyev, a very good friend."
Every five years, the people of Azerbaijan elect a president, and every five years since 1993, that president's name has been Mr. Aliyev. In the 2008 election, Mr. Aliyev received 89% of the vote. In 2013, he received 84.5%. And in 2018, he received 86% of the vote. During the 2018 election, Emin Huseynov worked for an NGO investigating electoral violations. We observed the elections and discovered irregularities. After that, the government closed down our institute. They confiscated all our equipment. They put most of us in jail.
"I decided to escape. The police in Azerbaijan were looking for me as if I was the number one terrorist in the country. They put my photo at the entrance of all metro stations. The taxi drivers and the bus drivers had my photo. I changed my appearance. I grew a beard and dyed my hair blonde. Secret agents were waiting in front of the Swiss Embassy. They asked the guard, 'Have you checked him?' And the guard replied, 'This is not the guy you are looking for. The guy is a foreigner.' Switzerland protected me, and after 10 months, the head of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs came to Azerbaijan, and he was able to take me with him to Switzerland. After that, President Aliyev illegally cancelled my passport, and he stripped me of my citizenship."
The Aliyev family's love of London property and use of offshore financial secrecy to hide their wealth is mirrored by another political dynasty of the developing world: the Sharifs of Pakistan. The Prime Minister of Pakistan has been disqualified from office. The court also disqualified the country's Finance Minister, Ishaq Dar. This verdict was unanimous. All the five judges declared that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is not an honest and sagacious person, and hence he should be disqualified.
Nawaz Sharif is the three-times elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. During his premiership in the '90s, Nawaz Sharif privatized many state-owned industries. "The privatization policies which were initiated by Mr. Nawaz during his terms as prime minister in the '90s, that is the start of corruption, where a lot of state holdings, they were portrayed as if they were making losses, and then they were handed out to different political backers of Nawaz Sharif, his friends, and his business associates."
The government of Nawaz Sharif then passed a law that the tax authorities in Pakistan could not question the origin of money that entered Pakistan from abroad. "One thing which we need to remember, and this is very, very important, when you are in power, you can make laws according to your will. You can actually manipulate the system. You can tell, you can bribe the people, you can get cuts from wherever you want. And this is what the Sharifs have been doing, and this is what they've been accused of over the years."
"It's a close-knit family affair. In the case of Hudaybia Paper Mills, once you look at the directors and shareholders, it's only the entire Sharif family, the immediate blood relations, and a few cousins who are also mentioned as directors. To look at the shareholding of Ramzan Sugar Mills, that gives you an idea that it is run by Chief Executive Officers. Mr. Hamza Shahbaz."
Shahbaz Sharif is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif. He was the leader of the Punjab Assembly while his brother was Prime Minister. He is accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars through the Ramzan Sugar Mills, a company owned by the Sharif family. "A lot of money went over in the name of these low-level, low-wage employees who do not come into the tax net. Money used to be deposited in those accounts, and finally, they used to land in the accounts of either Mr. Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, Mr. Salman Shahbaz Sharif, or Mr. Shahbaz Sharif himself. In fact, these files which you see here, it gives the names, it gives the banking documents, the challans, everything which is mentioned in these all the banking records, the names of the low-wage employees. Here is one example, you look at it. Mr. Masood Anwar, he is depositing this in the name of Mr. Shahbaz Sharif. This is 1.6 million rupees. This was deposited in Habib Bank of Pakistan on 26th, 27th April 2017, when Shahbaz Sharif was Chief Minister. This is another deposit, 13th May 2016, in the name of Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, an amount of 6 lakh 52,45 rupees, deposited in an account by Mr. Anwar. 1.90 lakh rupees being deposited in the account of Mr. Shahbaz Sharif by Masood Anwar."
"Now, you might ask, who is Masood Anwar? Masood Anwar, according to this investigation by the Federal Investigation Agency, was a low-level employee of the Sharif family."
"Your own family member is the Finance Minister, and your other brother is the Prime Minister. So then the entire banking chain was there to facilitate them. And I was talking to one of the sources in the investigation because once they investigated the bankers as to how it was happening under their nose and why they didn't stop all this activities, they said that people used to come with gunmen into the banks. And one of the female investigators said she was crying. A banking official, that what we could have done. The bank managers, they used to get a call from top, top executives in the bank. The banks themselves were part of this nexus of covering up the corruption of the Sharif family."
The so-called Panama Papers contain allegations of money laundering and tax evasion involving world leaders, and where some of them are accused of hiding their money, in many cases, in an effort to avoid taxes. "It was a surprise for the people in Pakistan because it came up internationally. It had much more credibility because previously, over the years, the Sharif family had been using the excuse that all these allegations against them are politically motivated."
Sharif's three children are named in the Panama Papers. His family owns properties in London through offshore accounts. Sharif's daughter denies owning the London properties. Documents from her allegedly date back to 2006 and show she is a trustee of the properties, not an owner. But those documents are written in a font called Calibri, which was not commercially available until 2007.
"If you look at 1992 and '93, this is a very important time. Maryam Nawaz grew 21 times, and there's no justification for that in a single year. You are not a business owner. There's no business under your name, but 21 times your assets have grown up. In 1992, Maryam Nawaz turned 19 years old."
After the Panama Papers revelations, Pakistan's investigative agencies probed the financial affairs of the Sharif family. "The Joint Investigation Team basically found out that Mr. Nawaz Sharif could not justify the assets he had made from known sources of income. That was one of the main charges. The matter was sent for criminal prosecution. In criminal prosecution, there was a trial which went on for almost a year, and in that trial, not even a single answer came from Mr. Sharif about the origin of his wealth or the explanation of those four Avenfield flats in London."
"Where is the money trail that they have never been able to prove?" The Sharif family is believed to be one of the wealthiest in Pakistan, but the origin of their wealth remains a mystery. "The flat that you're living in at the moment in Mayfair was actually named in the Pakistani paper, The News, last year as one of four which was illegally bought by your father through various Swiss and offshore companies."
"Why don't people who are actually blaming us for that go to the court and prove it?" "But do you know who owns the flat that you're living in?" "Well, that is not the question right now." "Why not? But it's the question I'm asking you. Do you know who owns the flat?" "Well, it's on a rent. It's, I'm renting on a rent basis, which comes from every quarter from Pakistan." "You're renting it personally, or the money comes from Pakistan?" "The money comes from Pakistan. I'm just like any other student living with his parents. I don't necessarily have to know about what the facts are, and who owns the flat, and who pays for the rents, and who pays for my living."
"The family deserves all this. It is not my fault that I was born in a rich family, in a wealthy family. My grandfather earned that with hard, hard work, sheer hard work." "When you ask them that where you got this money from, they will start telling you the story of their late grandfather. At the time of independence, we came from India, we have businesses."
"Seriously speaking, there's no business in the world which has no money trail. If you look at their tax filings, it doesn't come out as a big industrial family. The Sharifs never featured in the rich families of Pakistan. But now, if you make a list of the richest families in Pakistan, then definitely Sharifs would feature in the top 10, maybe in the top five. Because the exact amount of their holdings, as to how much is hidden in Luxembourg, in the UK, in the UAE, in Saudi Arabia, what is in different bank accounts in the United States, that is not known. Whether it is $4 billion or $5 billion, that is not known."
In December 2018, as a result of the Panama Papers revelations, Nawaz Sharif and his daughter are sentenced to 7 years on corruption charges. Nawaz Sharif is granted bail for medical treatment in London and refuses to return to Pakistan from London. Nawaz Sharif claims his downfall is a conspiracy by the Pakistani military.
We contacted Priti Patel MP, the Home Office Minister, to ask her why Nawaz Sharif, who had overstayed his British visitor visa by 2 years, had not been extradited from Britain. Priti Patel had been eager to deport asylum seekers during her time at the Home Office, yet she took no action against Nawaz Sharif. Priti Patel MP, the Home Office, did not agree to an interview. We also contacted the National Crime Agency. We wanted to find out why there had been no meaningful investigation into Nawaz Sharif's assets. The NCA did not agree to speak to us.
Nawaz Sharif is not the only member of the Sharif family who has made London his home. London is the second home of House of Sharif. Hassan Nawaz is here. Hussain Nawaz is here. Hussain's children, Zakaria and another son, is here. Hassan's children are here. Nawaz Sharif is here. And then, if you look at Ali Imran, who is the son-in-law of Nawaz Sharif, Asma Nawaz Sharif, who is the youngest daughter of Nawaz Sharif, she's here. Ishaq Dar is here. Then Shahbaz's family is here as well. Suleman Shahbaz is here. Ali Imran, who is actually the son-in-law of Shahbaz Sharif, who also lives in this country. Shahbaz Sharif's daughter, Rabia Imran, is also in this country, and she is actually on the run and wanted in Pakistan. Ali Imran is wanted in Pakistan. Ishaq Dar is wanted in Pakistan. All these people are wanted in Pakistan.
"Sitting in Pakistan, in a third-world country, you look at it as to why most of the people who are wanted by the courts in Pakistan, by the law in Pakistan, they find a refuge in London, UK. It doesn't make sense to me."
London is the destination of choice for politically exposed persons and their family members who have accumulated vast fortunes beyond their known sources of income. These fortunes are frequently laundered or transferred offshore to or through British dependent jurisdictions where their origin and ownership are obscured, and money can be reinvested into the global economy.
Capital flight is a major concern for developing countries. "We know that there's a huge capital flight, and it's not just specific to our time period, it has been historical. It directly impacts the economy because you see, the issue is that if our currency is not doing well, and we have a serious issue of sustaining the value of the Pakistani rupee, that has a correlation with capital flight."
The Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, an intergovernmental money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog headquartered in Paris, had put Pakistan on its grey list of jurisdictions. "Our financial systems have been made more accessible. We have sharing of information with almost everyone. We are pursuing many money laundering cases as far as we can pursue because, of course, the missing element still is the cooperation from the other jurisdictions that is not forthcoming. And sometimes we wonder that we are in the grey list, but the money that has been taken from here is in countries which are not in the grey list. So that is something that, you know, sometimes is like, okay, so why are we in the grey list then?"
We approached the FATF for an interview. The FATF declined to speak to us. "We would have liked to ask the FATF how it was possible for the UK, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, among others, to be considered clean when these countries are known to be major money laundering centers through whose economies billions of dollars of illicit money are reinvested every year."
"The money is stolen here, and it is hidden in the developed countries. In the developed world, if that is happening, it's not just the fault of the Pakistani system that the money is able to go out. What I question is the double standard. So, for example, if you ask on one side from countries like Pakistan to have more checks and be more open, we expect in return the same from other countries. When we are investigating someone, we will write a Mutual Legal Assistance request to, let's say, Switzerland, and we will say that we have information that Mr. A has a bank account in Switzerland in such and such bank. We don't know the branch, we don't know the account number, but he's definitely in the system, and his identity, date of birth, everything is shared. And we will seek information, and maybe one year or two years after, we will receive certain questions from saying, 'Can you identify the branch name?' or 'Can you give us the account number?' whereas we have said in our first request, we don't have those."
"When Pakistan's Tariq Insa government came into power, we formed an informal arrangement with the UK authorities called the Justice and Accountability Initiative, and the NCA also set up a small anti-corruption unit within the NCA, which was to assist Pakistan on its request."
The Home Office and the NCA, the UK's National Crime Agency, are responsible for dealing with Mutual Legal Assistance requests by foreign states. Pakistan filed numerous MLA requests in relation to the Sharif family's assets in London. "The requests on Sharif families are taking a lot of time. It's taking way too long to take some simple actions like, for example, freezing of assets or investigating the assets or the activities in the UK. When people are facing charges or convicted of serious crime in Pakistan, Pakistan did its part. We did our investigation, we did our inquiry, but has there been any investigation on the British side? We don't know. What about the Mayfair flats? What about the whole property portfolio of Hassan Nawaz that has come in Panama papers?"
"The impression that goes to people is that everyone who commits such crimes or who is involved in corruption ends up in London living in Mayfair flats."
"The main issues for developing countries are Western countries. Unfortunately, here in the UK and other Western countries, we can be very good at pointing the finger elsewhere and saying, 'Hey, look at all that corruption over there.' But the reality is, we are facilitating that corruption. We are complicit in the laundering of public funds because we have a ready-made system, ready to go, where corrupt individuals can hide, can spend, can clean their money."
"London and its role in the offshore world is that it's a money launderer's paradise. It's a money launderer's paradise or haven. You know, it's a place where if you want to stash illicitly earned wealth, you can do so anonymously, and you can do so with relatively few checks and balances."
The Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a major military operation against Ukraine. Thousands of troops, backed by tanks and missile fire, have crossed the border into Ukraine on every front. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on all of its citizens who were ready to defend the country from Russian forces to come forward, saying Kyiv would issue weapons to everyone who wants them. "We've already put in place the largest package of sanctions in our history. Today, the White House announced new sanctions against members of the Russian elite."
Tying Russian oligarchs directly to assets is proving very difficult because they are all masters of using shell companies and relatives to hide their true ownership. For those who wish to hide their money, British dependent territories such as the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and the British Virgin Islands are the destination of choice. In the past, Britain has claimed that these jurisdictions are independent and it cannot dictate their laws.
"I listened to the Foreign Secretary correctly detail the importance of avoiding sanctions leakage, and she was asked twice in the statement about British overseas territories. I detected a reluctance to go into detail on that. I've been very clear that we will absolutely be including overseas territories in all of these measures we're taking."
We contacted the Foreign Office because we wanted to ask them if they would now take similar action against illicit money from other countries. The Foreign Office declined to be interviewed for this documentary. In order to help it seize Russian assets, the UK passed the Economic Crime Act. The aim of the act is to help law enforcement identify and seize illicit money in the UK.
"The recent Economic Crime Act basically passed into law that any trusts that are involved in the ownership network of a property now have to declare the beneficial ownership to HMRC. However, that trust register is not public, so we're not entirely sure what information is even on it, whether that information is verified, or how effective it is. Overseas trusts that own UK property will also have to register. Well, under law, will have to register there. I don't know how much that will be enforced in practice. It's hard to say. It's not really clear how exactly that's going to be implemented."
"And, you know, so, for example, if we look at the register of persons with significant control over UK companies, a lot of people complied with that, a lot of companies complied with that, but a lot didn't. They declared what appear to be potentially nominees."
"Now, the UK government has promised to reform Companies House. At the moment, Companies House is not empowered to check and verify the information that is submitted to it. It's quite possible to write down, like I said, Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, not the real beneficial owner, and no one's really going to check that information. So when we look at setting up something similar for the property register, you know, we're likely to encounter the same kind of problems. How many of them are actually going to comply? And if they do, how do we know that that's the real, you know, the real beneficiary who owns that? How do we verify that?"
"It's not hard to see why UK companies have become a vehicle of choice for corrupt actors, for money launderers, to use to move and hide their wealth because the enforcement is weak."
We wanted to speak to the NCA about what they felt would help them tackle the issue of money laundering in the UK. The NCA did not agree to speak to us. The NCA is a department of the British Home Office. We were interested to find out if the NCA felt it could act outside of the ministry it forms a part of, or whether its prosecutions were directed by the interests of the government rather than in the interests of the prosecution of crime.
In February 2022, The Guardian newspaper reported that the former Conservative Minister, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, who attempted to introduce a public register of overseas property owners in 2017 and 2018, was approached by civil servants from four government departments who told him to drop the public register of overseas property owners. Lord Pethick-Lawrence told the newspaper that "it is a real irony that our reputation for protecting the rule of law is one of the things that attracts people who have very little regard for the rule of law themselves and come from countries which ignore it almost altogether."
We approached the FATF, the National Crime Agency, the Foreign Office, John Glen MP, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, and Priti Patel MP, in charge of the Home Office. None of these individuals and organizations agreed to take part in this documentary. But when we contacted Imran Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan agreed to our request for an interview.
"Good to meet you." "How are you?" "Very well, thank you. And you?" "Good, thanks. So you're not going to be in the..." "No." "What is this? A sort of like a documentary?" "A question and answer?" "It's a documentary about individuals who have become very wealthy by being at the center of power and currently have a lot of wealth in London, especially in poverty."
"Corruption is not just an issue for Pakistan, it is an issue for all the poor countries. In fact, I've come to this conclusion that countries are poor only because of corruption, and corruption of the elite. It's the corruption of the powerful that destroys a country, not the corruption of the weak. When I, as a prime minister, if I want to make money out of my country, steal money, and then send it abroad, I can only do it if I weaken the state institutions that would check my corruption. So the institutions get corrupt, and they get weaker, and they cannot stand in front of the powerful."
"The richer countries must come forward and treat money taken out of poor countries, money laundered out of poor countries, the same way as terror financing and as drug money. Because these two, terror financing and drug money, affect the richer countries. The laws are very strict, but there's hardly any attempt to stop this plunder of the poor countries."
"I feel that there is no incentive for rich countries to repatriate money or take action against these people because they benefit from them. There are countries that are benefiting from money stolen from our countries and which are parked there. They are benefiting from billions of dollars which flow into their properties and their businesses, stolen from this country. So what incentive would they have? We are the ones who suffer, and this is the dilemma. We don't have the resources to get the money back, and they don't have any incentive to send it back to us. So this is the big problem which the entire developing world is facing."
"I guess it's a question of now hiring more expensive lawyers abroad. But you see, when you look at the laws, they basically favor, I mean, I'm talking about the richer countries as a whole, they tend to favor the crooks. It is so complicated to get your money back."
Imran Khan has raised this issue in almost every forum that the rich countries must take care of poor countries, and the care involves that the looted money that was that is now invested in the rich countries must be returned to the original countries. "In Panama Papers, the properties of Sharifs are categorically mentioned, and all these properties are in the heart of London, and everyone, including the British government, knows that these properties are actually bought from laundered money."
"I think international politics play a big role here. So some countries, you know, they say that what is ours is ours, and what is yours is also ours. So this is the case with the British government right now, the United States increasingly, that various other territories in the West are not only refusing to dismantle or make more open and accountable these kinds of systems, but are actively supporting territories that allow for the inflow of illicit financial wealth. And the world needs to be able to wake up to something like this. They'll shout about the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musks and Apples and all sorts of things, but they are eerily silent about the wealth that's being taken out and invested because it helps their countries. That's not right. We become victims twice, where when we are asking for our wealth to be returned, it becomes so difficult for us to have that happen."
"The Congolese still don't have the wealth from Mobutu Sese Seko's reign returned. The Nigerians still don't have wealth from Sani Abacha and many other people returned. I'd say the same probably of the Dos Santos regime. Countries that actively build these systems, actively finance these systems, and protect them, don't do enough to be able to make them more open and accountable. That's just not right."
Offshore leaks have revealed time and time again that politically exposed persons use secrecy jurisdictions to hide their wealth, launder their wealth, and reinvest that wealth back into the global economy. A large part of the international financial system and many of the major financial secrecy jurisdictions are controlled and regulated by Western interests.
Imran Khan frequently spoke out against money laundering and offshore financial centers. His government challenged Western institutions and governments to return and reveal dirty money and undeclared assets of Pakistani origin, pursued an independent foreign policy, and angered the US by refusing to host CIA sites on Pakistani soil. On the 7th of March 2022, the Pakistani ambassador to the US reported in a classified communication that Donald Lu, a senior State Department official, had informed him that Pakistan-US relations could improve only if Imran Khan was removed from power.
Khan actually accused the US of being behind a conspiracy to get him ousted from power. "The Prime Minister of Pakistan accused the US of working with the opposition to remove him from power." "There is absolutely no truth to that allegation. We are not going to let propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, lies, get in the way of any bilateral relationship we have, including with the bilateral relationship we have with Pakistan."
Prime Minister Imran Khan has been ousted from power. Lawmakers elected the opposition leader, Shehbaz Sharif, as the country's new Prime Minister. "A new dawn has started. A new is coming. Allah has answered the prayers of millions." When Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of Nawaz Sharif, was appointed Prime Minister on Monday, the 11th of April, The Guardian newspaper wrote, "He is known as a diligent administrator with such a great love of poetry that he often opens official meetings with recitals of famous revolutionary Urdu poets." His first words to Parliament were, "One must set himself free from all bounds of desires."
Imran Khan claimed he had been removed by a foreign-backed conspiracy. "The US Embassy was calling members of my party, backbenchers who were not happy, and they were the first ones who then jumped ship, and they were the ones who then offered a million dollars each to buy my other members of parliament who actually jumped ship later on. And then Donald Lu's conversation with the ambassador the next day, the no-confidence motion is tabled in the assembly."
"What do you think?" "You have made some significant allegations there." "When it's not allegations, we have evidence. Why would I want to blame the US if I did not have hard evidence? This was an official message with no leaks given to the ambassador. Message received by me, by our president, given to the Chief Justice of Pakistan. This is real."
"Not only was a democratically elected government removed through the conspiracy, we have been replaced by a bunch of criminals. 60% of the cabinet which is sitting right now is on bail. The Prime Minister was about to be sentenced in a corruption case of billions of rupees, and his son."
"The Sharif doctrine is that you buy different people in all the important positions of power. Whether it's in the media, you have your sympathetic journalists who continue to argue for you, that the country can only be saved by the wisdom of the Sharif family. The generals, when they retired, they are also accommodated. The judges, once they are retired, they are also accommodated. The journalists, they are also given government positions, and they willingly take it. So it's the entire Sharif doctrine which gives them the sense that they can even get away with murder in Pakistan."
"Nadeem has learned that even though if you are out of power, if you manage to gain time, and if you manage to delay the cases in the courts of law, and once you come back into power, you can manage to get a clean chit. So I think this time also the same strategy is being followed by the Sharif family. I think those in power, they think that they can get away with the crimes they have done, and the Sharif family has been benefiting from them because of their international friends who have been coming to their rescue to strike the dirty deals."
Someone once said that to accumulate wealth beyond one's wildest dreams, one must be close to the individuals who make the rules and who enforce those rules. When Shehbaz Sharif's coalition government was appointed, one of its first actions was to pass an amendment to restrict the power of the National Accountability Bureau, which had been in charge of investigating white-collar crime by public office holders. The amendment, which was passed in June 2022, was to take effect retrospectively. The amendment stipulated that the courts had to decide on the outcome of a case within one year and stated that if sufficient evidence was not provided at the time of the arrest, the arresting officer could face 5 years in jail for the filing of a false reference.
Dr. Muhammad Rizwan, the 47-year-old chief investigator who presided over the investigation against Shehbaz Sharif and his family in the Ramzan Sugar Mills case, died of a heart attack on the 9th of May 2022. Another investigator on the same case suffered a heart attack and remains in critical condition. Malik Masood, through whose accounts prosecutors alleged 3.7 billion Pakistani Rupees were laundered to various Sharif family members, had been cooperating with investigators when he too suffered a heart attack and died on the 7th of June 2022. The 49-year-old had been a tea boy at the Ramzan Sugar Mills, where he drew a salary of approximately $300 per annum for his work at the Sharif family-owned enterprise.
According to the wealth report, London is the wealth capital of the world, beating New York to the top spot. London is the favorite playground of the world's politically exposed oligarchs and their family members. The Sharif family of Pakistan, the Aliyevs of Azerbaijan, the Kenyattas of Kenya, and many other current and former politically connected families who acquired vast fortunes beyond their known sources of income own billions of pounds of prime London property. London boasts the greatest diversity of international property investors, with people from 45 countries owning properties in London.
British dependent jurisdictions continue to offer financial secrecy and tax evasion services. 84,000 properties in the UK are owned anonymously. The UK government has made repeated promises to crack down on dirty money, but on each occasion, the government has failed to implement the promised legislation or watered down the legislation so as to make it ineffective. Britain remains the capital of libel tourism, where the wealthy come to attempt to silence their critics. London continues to be a safe haven for the global elite that have fallen out of favor in their home countries.
Pakistan, under Imran Khan, attempted for years to engage with Britain to repatriate laundered money. Many other developing countries have done the same without success. We approached numerous UK government bodies and ministers for this documentary. Not one agreed to speak to us. The FATF, the intergovernmental money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog headquartered in Paris, indicated in its first review after the ousting of Imran Khan that Pakistan had met all of the compliance recommendations to be removed from the FATF grey list.
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