Military’s media wing quashes claims of Bajwa family assets on social media as based on ‘lies’, ‘malicious intent’
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Sunday denounced the “nefarious campaign” maligning the outgoing Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
“Misleading data regarding the assets of army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and his family have been shared on social media,” the ISPR said adding that the “figures are exaggerated and based on assumptions”.
The military’s media wing furthered that “a certain group has very cleverly and dishonestly attributed the assets of General Bajwa’s daughter-in-law’s father and her family to the army chief and his family”.
Rejecting the claims circulating social media that certain assets were created by General Bajwa’s family during his six-year tenure as “completely false”, “blatant lies and malice”, the ISPR also said that “all assets of Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, his wife and family are duly declared in Federal Board of Revenue (FBR)”.
The statement also says that the army chief and his family regularly file their tax returns and that “like every citizen, the army chief and his family are accountable to the tax authorities for their assets”.
It may be noted that earlier this week, the government had ordered an investigation into the leak of legally protected tax information of the family of General Bajwa.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had taken serious notice of the illegal and unwarranted leakage of tax information, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance on Monday.
“This is clearly violative of the complete confidentiality of tax information that the law provides”, the Finance Ministry had stated.
It was later reported that the FBR had traced the identities of the people who had been behind the leak.
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