Khawaja Asif rejects leaked property records, says 'nothing new in it'

• Naqvi says property bought in his wife's name was sold out last year.
• "Sale proceeds used to buy another property some weeks ago."
• Khawaja Asif says "nothing new in" Dubai property leaks. 

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said Tuesday that the property purchased in Dubai under his wife’s name was declared with relevant authorities after a bombshell report revealed that several prominent Pakistanis owned assets in the Gulf emirate.

“The property bought in my wife’s name has been declared. The property was also shown in the tax returns filed [with relevant authorities],” Naqvi, who also served as the caretaker chief minister of Punjab, said in a statement.

The security czar said that his wife bought this property in 2017 but sold that out a year ago. 

"The sale proceeds were used to buy another property some weeks ago," he added.

'Nothing new in it': Khawaja Asif

Reacting to Dubai leaks, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif censured the leaked property records, saying that there was “nothing new in it” and termed it a “remake of a flopped old movie”.

In a post on X (former Twitter), the senior politico claimed that those prominent personalities — Pervez Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, Faisal Vawda and many others named in the fresh property leaks — had also been named in Panama leaks which they did not deny.

He added that former premier Nawaz Sharif had also been targeted despite having no connection with Panama papers.

In another tweet, Asif further alleged that the "flop episode" was seemingly a planned attempt to divert attention from the “real culprits”, who were probably behind Dubai leaks’ funding.

He predicted “more big news” were likely to hit media as soon as they were coming to a conclusion.

The remarks came as a global collaborative investigative journalism project has revealed the ownership of properties of the global elite in Dubai.

The list includes political figures, globally sanctioned individuals, alleged money launderers and criminals. Pakistanis have also been identified on the list and their combined value has been estimated at around $11 billion.

More than a dozen retired military officials and their families, as well as bankers and bureaucrats, own properties in upscale Dubai areas, according to data revealed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s (OCCRP) Dubai Unlocked project.

The project — ‘Dubai Unlocked’ — based on the data that provides a detailed overview of hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai and information about their ownership or usage, largely from 2020 and 2022, surfaced on Tuesday.

Properties purchased in the name of companies and those that are in commercial areas are not part of this analysis.