Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Shabbar Zaidi claims that Pakistanis have stashed $7-8 billion in banks around the world.
He made these remarks during a briefing National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue.
Zaidi said that the government had signed an agreement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2016. The treaty has helped Pakistan exchange data with 28 countries.
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He said that in total, the revenue board has received the information about 57,450 foreign accounts. A massive sum of money – nearly $5 billion – was dumped in 378 accounts.
MNA Asad Umar convened the Standing Committee’s session. He said that the data identified 247 people with offshore companies and accounts that had not declared their assets in the recent tax scheme.
He directed the FBR to take action against them if they do not disclose their assets.
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FBR’s DG International Taxation also attended the meeting. He briefed the National Assembly on the difficulties the department faced in acquiring the data and interpreting it as only names of the individuals were available.
The committee agreed to get another briefing on the matter on November 2019, when the amnesty scheme ends.
