I'm sure ` means something totally different than " to the remote shell. The $ in $i also needs to be escaped (or else Perl will try to interpolate its variable).

@data = `ssh $key 'for i in \`ls /home/dist/\` ; do cat \$i ; done'`;
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or

@data = qx!ssh $key 'for i in `ls /home/dist/` ; do cat \$i ; done'!;
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However, isn't
for i in `ls /home/dist/` ; do cat $i ; done
the same as
cat /home/dist/*?
If so, the following would be simpler.

@data = `ssh $key 'cat ls /home/dist/*'`;
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AH thats nice ...thank you very much for your help that takes care of the problem. thank u

use Net::SFTP::Foreign;

my $s = Net::SFTP::Foreign->new('apple1');
die "sftp connection failed: ". $s->error if $s->error;

my @fn = $sftp->glob('/home/dist/*', names_only => 1);

for my $fn (@fn) {
  my $data = $s->get_content($fn);
  if ($s->error) {
    warn "unable to read $fn: ".$s->error
  }
  else {
    print $data;
  }
}
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