South Asia Investor Review

Organization of Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs ( OPEN ) Silicon Valley has just announced a panel discussion featuring Pakistan's former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and former attorney general Munir Malik. Pakistan's Ex-Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry This discussion is titled "The Pakistani Legal Code And How It Impacts Investors And Entrepreneurs". It is scheduled  for 10:15 AM at "OPEN Forum 2014", the organization's annual conference on Saturday, May 10, 2014, at the Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley If I were asked to moderate this panel, I would not treat it as an abstract discussion of how rule of law impacts investors and entrepreneurs anywhere in general. Instead, I would focus on how Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry conducted himself and how his conduct affected the investment climate and the economy in Pakistan during his tenure as Chief Justice of Pakistan. Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan: World Bank's data...

In yet another egregious example of  increasing judicial activism, Islamabad High Court's Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, the judge who also ordered Musharraf's arrest , has suspended Pakistan's top tax collector Arshad Hakeem. Hakeem was working on an ambitious technology-based project to go after powerful tax dodgers in the country. In a country where the rich and the powerful pay little or no tax , Ali Arshad Hakeem became "a hated man" in just seven months after his appointment as FBR chairman, according to a report in the UK's Telegraph newspaper .  Coming from IT and business management background  Hakeem put in place a database designed to monitor the spending habits of millions of people, and calculate how much tax they owed. At the click of a mouse, he could look up details of the elite's holiday habits, electricity bills and bank accounts, complete with photos, addresses and vehicle details, said the newspaper. By linking government database...