Royal Gerald, spokesperson company ICIJ, which issued the Panama leaks has rebuffed the story about the seeking of pardon from Pakistan’s Premier Nawaz Sharif by saying that the name of the Pakistani Prime Minister is present in the leaks with connection to his children. Royal Gerald in his statement said that asking for clemency from Nawaz Sharif was out of question. He said that there was not any truth in the news story regarding seeking forgiveness from Sharif carried by some section of the media. “We made it clear that the name of Nawaz Sharif is present in the Panama leaks in connection with his children and his name was not removed from the list that was revealed by Panama papers”, Gerald added. It is pertinent to mention here that an English and a Urdu daily newspaper published the news item that ICIJ included the name of Prime Minister erroneously and it sought forgiveness from Sharif , but the statement of Gerald proves it wrong.
However, according to Online news agency, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has removed the name of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from all its news stories, terming it an editing error. ICIJ, which unearthed the Panama Papers containing details of offshore companies, earlier in its stories titled “Panama Papers The Power Players” and “Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption”, had declared that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif controls offshore companies. The ICIJ had declared that the name of Nawaz Sharif was included in the data. “The files exposed offshore companies controlled by the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the king of Saudi Arabia and the children of the president of Azerbaijan,” the stories read the statement. In a clarification, the ICIJ said due to an editing error, a sentence in an earlier version of this story implied that the prime minister of Pakistan controlled an offshore company that appeared in the Panama papers. It further said that it is his children who control the offshore companies. The development apparently took place after Daniyal Aziz, a PML-N MNA, wrote a complaint to the ICIJ about inaccuracies and discrepancies in its reports about Nawaz Sharif. The ICIJ has updated its website and removed all the wrong facts on April 21.
