ISLAMABAD - Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah yesterday said there was no hope that top government bureaucrats would share with the members of Public Accounts Committee any solid information regarding offshore companies at its meetings.

“I don’t think the heads of NAB, FIA, SECP and SBP will share details or any solid information about the offshore companies with the PAC,” said Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Khursheed Shah, who is also the PAC chairman, in an exclusive chat with The Nation yesterday.

The opposition leader said the offshore companies issue was discussed at the PAC meetings in length, but no conclusion was reached as the top bosses of anti-corruption agencies and financial institutions were reluctant to share details with the committee in this regard. The opposition leader was also apparently not much eager to summon top government organisation heads at a PAC meeting once again to discuss the issue.

All the top government organisations except FBR had already conveyed to the PAC that they could not probe the issue. The FBR had assured the committee of briefing the PAC on those having offshore companies. The FBR has also recently informed the PAC that only 140 of 336 Panama nominees had responded to the notices issued since September 1 2016.

The committee, under Rule 224, decided to hold a discussion on the Panama leaks issue, but no official from the main anti-corruption and investigative agencies turned up in the first meeting for the reasons best known to them.

Some of the government MNAs had also strongly criticised the government top officials for ignoring the parliament and proposed to empower a parliamentary committee to decide promotion cases of over 20-grade officials.

The opposition leader a couple of days back also criticised on the National Assembly floor the ‘flawed recovery system’ of the Public Accounts Committee. Shah proposed drastic changes in the law for improvement in the PAC recovery mechanism.