Javed Safiullah—the Pakistani who tops Panama Papers list

LAHORE: The 65-year-old Javed Saifullah, the Pakistani business magnate who owns 17 of the 34 offshore companies owned by his family, had studied at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University of the United States. The Saifullah family is respected as well as influential.

It should be noted that it is yet to ascertained that offshore companies were made according to law or not. Many reputable firms do business through offshore companies in accordance with the law.

After earning an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, Javed Saifullah had moved back to Pakistan and joined his family business. 

In 1979, Javed had settled in New York in order to promote the family’s textile operation. When he returned to Islamabad for a holiday in 1981, his mother convened a family meeting and asked him to take over the reins of the family because his brother Salim Saifullah Khan was to be sworn in as Finance Minister of the then NWFP.

Javed has been the Chief Executive of the famous Saif Group of Companies, which has businesses ranging from healthcare, cement, textiles and real estate to energy and telecommunications etc.

Saif Group’s textile division owns and manages three companies: Saif Textile Mills with installed capacity of 88,476 spindles, Kohat Textile Mills with an installed capacity of 44,400 spindles and the Mediterranean Textile Company is located in Egypt. 

It was this business group that had brought the first GSM phone service to Pakistan in 1994 in a venture with Messrs Motorola. The company was named Mobilink. 

However, the Saif Group had sold its stakes in 2007.

Javed is the son of the late politician of Kyhber Pukhtunkhwa Begum Kulsum Saifullah, who had passed away in January 2015. His father Saifullah Khan, a barrister who had ended up starting a canning business after the outbreak of WW II, had died in 1964.

Two of his maternal uncles - Yousuf Khattak and Aslam Khattak - have also been active in politics for many years. 

Aslam Khattak had served in various capacities under different governments. He had been a personal friend of the former King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan and had persuaded him to agree to a confederation between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Brother of Messrs Humayun Saifullah Khan, ex-Federal Minister Anwar Saifullah Khan, Salim Saifullah Khan and Iqbal Saifullah Khan, Javed’s elder son Jahengir Khan had joined Imran Khan’s PTI in February 2012.

While Iqbal Saifullah is son-in-law of former National Assembly Speaker Gohar Ayub Khan, Anwar Saifullah is the son-in-law of former Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the father-in-law of ex-Finance Minister Omar Ayub Khan, the son of Gohar Ayub Khan and grandson of President Ayub Khan.

—Originally published in The News