Pakistani Prime Minister Disqualified

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Disqualified due to corruption found in Panama Papers.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office over accusations of corruption, delivering a historic ruling that is likely to shift the country’s tumultuous political balance and deal a serious blow to the legacy of a man who helped define the past generation of Pakistani politics.

The removal of Mr. Sharif, who was serving his third term in office, comes roughly a year before his term was to end.

The verdict means the governing political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, must choose an interim prime minister to replace Mr. Sharif until the next general election, which is scheduled for mid-2018.

Announced by the five-member Supreme Court, the verdict caps more than a year of high political drama, breathless court proceedings and a piercing investigation into the finances of the Sharif family.

Watching the courtroom drama was the country’s powerful military, which has traditionally decided the fate of civilian governments. There had been hushed speculation that the court, in coming to its decision, had the tacit, if not overt, backing of powerful generals.

Continue reading the main story
The charges against Mr. Sharif and three of his children — two sons and a daughter — stemmed from disclosures last year in the Panama Papers, which revealed that the children owned expensive residential property in London through a string of offshore companies. In their ruling on Friday, the justices also ordered the opening of criminal investigations against the Sharif family.

Imran Khan, the opposition politician who has been spearheading the campaign against Mr. Sharif since he took power in 2013, stands to gain the most politically from the removal of Mr. Sharif. Mr. Khan has doggedly and almost obsessively led the charge against Mr. Sharif and rallied a wide swath of the public against him through a mix of street agitation and court petitions.

The Supreme Court had asked the members of the Sharif family to provide a paper trail of the money they used to buy their London apartments. Investigators found that they were “living beyond their means.”

Despite repeated court exhortations, Mr. Sharif’s family and its lawyers failed to provide satisfactory documentation, the justices said. Several of the documents they produced were declared fake or insufficient.

Mr. Sharif has called the inquiry into his family’s finances a conspiracy and has asserted that in his three terms as prime minister he has not been tarred by a major corruption scandal. He repeatedly rebuffed calls to resign and said that he had done no wrong.

The ruling, while expected, leaves unanswered the long-term fate of the man who has been a dominating force in Pakistani politics for the better part of three decades.

“I did not expect Nawaz Sharif to go scot-free,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent political analyst who is based in Lahore.

“If he has a long-term vision, he will sit back and guide his political party,” Mr. Rizvi added. “He and his supporters will portray the court verdict as victimization and a grave conspiracy involving international powers.”