Imran Khan rejected the resignation of Asim Saleem Bajwa.
Islamabad:
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s special assistant for information and broadcasting, Lt. General (retired) Asim Saleem Bajwa, resigned on Monday, as he reportedly used his offices to help his family set up several off-shore companies.
“I asked the Honorable Prime Minister to relinquish SAPM’s additional portfolio on information and dissemination. He very kindly approved my request,” tweeted Bajwa, the former army spokesman. Pakistani who also served as the commander of the southern command.
However, he would continue to work as chairman of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority (CPEC), Dawn newspaper reported.
The development comes more than a month after Bajwa tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Khan following a report on a website that he had used his offices to start off-shore businesses from his wife, his sons and his brothers.
However, Mr Khan rejected his resignation at the time and asked him to continue working as a special assistant.
The report claims that Bajwa’s younger brothers opened their first pizzeria Papa John in 2002, the year he started working as a lieutenant colonel in General Pervez Musharraf’s staff.
He claimed that his brother Nadeem Bajwa, 53, who started as a delivery driver for the pizza restaurant franchise, three other brothers, his wife Farrukh Zeba and three sons now own a business empire that has established 99 companies in four countries, including a pizza. franchise with 133 restaurants valued at $ 39.9 million.
Out of a total of 99 companies, 66 are main companies, 33 are branches of some of the main companies, while five companies are now dead.
The Bajwa family businesses spent about $ 52.2 million to expand their business and $ 14.5 million to buy properties in the United States, according to the site’s report.
His wife was a shareholder in all foreign companies and also a partner or is a shareholder in 85 companies including 82 foreign companies (71 in the United States, seven in the UAE and four in Canada).
The report states that some of these US companies (all jointly owned by Zeba) also have real estate investments and own 13 commercial properties in the US, including two shopping centers.
Interestingly, Bajwa after joining the Cabinet declared his holdings in June this year, not to mention his wife’s foreign holdings.
Following the publication of the report, opposition parties called on Bajwa to face the allegations against him.
A newly formed alliance of 11 opposition parties – the Pakistan Democratic Movement – passed a resolution in September, saying the claims made in the report regarding Bajwa’s assets and family business should be investigated. The forum said he should be removed from his post as chairman of the CPEC authority until the investigation is completed.
Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz vice-president Maryam Nawaz said on Monday that SAPM’s resignation “meant nothing.”
She demanded that Bajwa resign from his post as president of the CPEC Authority and “surrender to the law.”
