Karachi: Warmly welcoming the recent initiatives of the judiciary against corruption and corrupt elements, Voice against Corruption President Ahsan Bari Advocate has said huge chunks of the ill-gotten money are hidden in the real estate and if investments in this sector are probed properly many more hidden corrupt elements would be unearthed.
He said in a statement here Wednesday that it is an open secret that the corrupt elements invest their ill-gotten money in real estate sector. He said there are two reasons for this: this investment is considered secure and profits in real estate investment are very high. He said for the sake of our coming generations we have to fight the menace of corruption with urgency and full force.
He said there should be a proper mechanism to distinguish real investors with legal money and phony investors seeking a safe refuge for their black money. He said the corruption watchdog bodies should get detailed record on investment and transactions in costly real estate during last 20 years and see who are the real investors and is their money legal or illegal. He said when big fish of corruption are exposed it would become very difficult for other people to go for malpractices like bribery and kickbacks. He said the expansion in the real estate sector does not match with the tax collection amount in Pakistan, which indicates to massive corruption.
Ahsan Bari said our country is facing huge economic problems due to rampant corruption mostly in government departments. He said a foolproof mechanism should be made to see the real sources of legal income of investors and magnitude of their investment in the real estate. He said this would not only help in recovering proper income tax and property tax from well-to-do people but also unveil the faces of corrupt bureaucracy and politicians.