Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was on Friday disqualified from holding the post by a five-judge bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court over accusations of corruption, delivering a historic ruling that is likely to shift the country’s political balance. The removal of 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 Sharif until the next general election, which is scheduled for mid-2018.

The charges against Sharif and three of his children 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 for “living beyond their means”. Read more here. 

Opposition politician Imran Khan, had been spearheading the campaign against Sharif since 2013, and stands to gain the most politically from the removal of Sharif. The New York Times described him as “doggedly and almost obsessively” leading the charge against Sharif through a mix of street agitation and court petitions.

The Panama Paper investigation was carried out by several news organisations including The Indian Express, after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) shared files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The records had been obtained from an anonymous source by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, reports stated.