Do you Know Your Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari
12-09-2008
Mr. President’s
parents owned an estate in Normandy, France, worth U.S. $2.5 million. At the
time of their marriage, they owned modest assets in Karachi. But it does not
matter, really, since it can’t be proved. Love live the lawyers, of course.
In 1990, Zardari was arrested on charges of blackmail, based on allegations that
he attached a bomb to a Pakistani businessman, Murtaza Bukhari, and forced him
to withdraw money from his bank account. However, the charges were dropped when
he was released from prison in 1993 when his wife's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)
took power and forced the charges out.
He was kept in custody from 1997 to 2004 on charges ranging from corruption to
murder. He was granted bail and released in November 2004 when a judge released
Zardari under great pressure. However, he was re-arrested on 21 December 2004
after his failure to attend a hearing in a murder trial in Karachi.
Corruption
Zardari and Benazir
Bhutto denied corruption allegations; however, in August 2004, Zardari finally
admitted owning a £4.35m estate in Surrey, England (including a 20-room mansion
and two farms on 365 acres, or 1.5 km², of land), which the Pakistani
authorities allege was bought with the proceeds of corruption. Legal proceedings
brought by the then Government of Pakistan against Zardari to recover the sale
proceeds of the property are continuing before the High Court of Justice of
England and Wales.In October 2006, the court dismissed Zardari's application to
halt the proceedings on the basis that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the
case. As of late 2007, Zardari is seeking permission to appeal that decision.
French, Polish, Spanish, and Swiss documents have fuelled the charges of
corruption against Bhutto and her husband. They faced a number of legal
proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Though
never convicted, her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on
similar corruption charges.
A 1998 New York Times investigative report claims that Pakistani investigators
have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the
family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder.
According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated
that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft
manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5%
commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari. The article
also said a Dubai company received an exclusive license to import gold into
Pakistan for which Asif Zardari received payments of more than $10 million into
his Dubai-based Citibank accounts. The owner of the company denied that he had
made payments to Zardari and claims the documents were forged.
The prosecutors have alleged that their Swiss bank accounts contain £740
million. Zardari also bought a neo-Tudor mansion and estate worth over £4
million in Surrey, England, UK. The Pakistani investigations have tied other
overseas properties to Zardari's family. These include a $2.5 million manor in
Normandy owned by Zardari's parents, who had modest assets at the time of his
marriage. Bhutto denied holding substantive overseas assets.
Switzerland
On July 23, 1998, the
Swiss Government handed over documents to the government of Pakistan which
relate to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband. The
documents included a formal charge of money laundering by Swiss authorities
against Zardari. The Pakistani government had been conducting a wide-ranging
inquiry to account for more than $13.7 million frozen by Swiss authorities in
1997 that was allegedly stashed in banks by Bhutto and her husband. The
Pakistani government filed criminal charges against Bhutto in an effort to track
down an estimated $1.5 billion she and her husband are alleged to have received
in a variety of criminal enterprises. The documents suggest that the money
Zardari was alleged to have laundered was accessible to Benazir Bhutto and had
been used to buy a diamond necklace for over $175,000. The PPP has responded by
flatly denying the charges, suggesting that Swiss authorities have been misled
by false evidence provided by the Government of Pakistan.
On August 6, 2003, Swiss magistrates found Bhutto and her husband guilty of
money laundering, They were given six-month suspended jail terms, fined $50,000
each and were ordered to pay $11 million to the Pakistani government. The
six-year trial concluded that Bhutto and Zardari deposited in Swiss accounts $10
million given to them by a Swiss company in exchange for a contract in Pakistan.
The couple said they would appeal. The Pakistani investigators say Zardari
opened a Citibank account in Geneva in 1995 through which they say he passed
some $40 million of the $100 million he received in payoffs from foreign
companies doing business in Pakistan. In October 2007, Daniel Zappelli, chief
prosecutor of the canton of Geneva, said he received the conclusions of a money
laundering investigation against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
on October 29, but it was unclear whether there would be any further legal
action against her in Switzerland.
A Swiss investigating magistrate has amassed enough evidence, including the
purchase of a diamond necklace, to indict Pakistan's former Prime Minister,
Benazir Bhutto and husband on money-laundering charges tied to contracts with
two Geneva-based companies. The magistrate, Daniel Devaud, decided not to bring
the charges against Ms. Bhutto in Switzerland, but rather to ask Pakistani
authorities to indict her. The Geneva magistrate has been conducting a
wide-ranging inquiry seeking to account for more than $13.7 million frozen by
Swiss authorities in 2006.
The money was allegedly stashed in Swiss banks. The public proceedings were
required to be dropped against Bhutto due to her death; however, the proceedings
are still continuing against Zardari as of late December 2007.
Poland
The Polish Government
has given Pakistan 500 pages of documentation relating to corruption allegations
against Benazir Bhutto and her husband. These charges are in regard to the
purchase of 8,000 tractors in a 1997 deal. According to Pakistani officials, the
Polish papers contain details of illegal commissions paid by the tractor company
in return for agreeing to their contract. It was alleged that the arrangement
"skimmed" Rs 103 mn rupees ($2 million) in kickbacks. "The documentary evidence
received from Poland confirms the scheme of kickbacks laid out by Asif Zardari
and Benazir Bhutto in the name of (the) launching of Awami tractor scheme", APP
said. Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari allegedly received a 7.15% commission on the
purchase through their front men, Jens Schlegelmilch and Didier Plantin of
Dargal S.A., who received about $1.969 million for supplying 5,900 Ursus
tractors.
France
Potentially the most
lucrative deal alleged in the documents involved the effort by Dassault
Aviation, a French military contractor. French authorities indicated in 1998
that Bhutto's husband, Zardari, offered exclusive rights to Dassault to replace
the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a five percent commission to be
paid to a corporation in Switzerland controlled by Zardari.
At the time, French corruption laws forbade bribery of French officials but
permitted payoffs to foreign officials, and even made the payoffs tax-deductible
in France. However, France changed this law in 2000.
Helicopter scandal
In 1998-1999, an
enquiry was conducted by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament
to investigate the matter regarding the purchase of the helicopter. The case
involves defrauding substantive sum of $2.168 million and $1.1 million public
money. The record shows that the case was not pursued properly nor diligently.
FIR No 1 of 1998 was registered with Federal Investigation Agency State Bank
Circle Rawalpindi on the complaint of Cabinet Division. Thorough investigation
was conducted by the committee headed by Chaudhry Muhammad Barjees Tahir and two
other members, namely Faridullah Jamali and Jamshaid Ali Shah. During this
investigation the committee Chairman Barjees Tahir summoned both the former
President Farooq Leghari and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto along with
others, and they were investigated.
Western Asia
In the largest single
payment investigators have uncovered, a gold bullion dealer in Western Asia was
alleged to have deposited at least $10 million into one of Zardari's accounts
after the Bhutto government gave him a monopoly on gold imports that sustained
Pakistan's jewellery industry. The money was allegedly deposited into Zardari's
Citibank account in Dubai. Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, stretching from Karachi
to the border with Iran, has long been a gold smugglers' haven. Until the
beginning of Bhutto's second term, the trade, running into hundreds of millions
of dollars a year, was unregulated, with slivers of gold called biscuits, and
larger weights in bullion, carried on planes and boats that travel between the
Persian Gulf and the largely unguarded Pakistani coast.
Shortly after Bhutto returned as Prime Minister in 1993, a Pakistani bullion
trader in Dubai, Abdul Razzak Yaqoob, proposed a deal: in return for the
exclusive right to import gold, Razzak would help the government regularize the
trade. In November 1994, Pakistan's Commerce Ministry wrote to Razzak informing
him that he had been granted a license that made him, for at least the next two
years, Pakistan's sole authorized gold importer. In an interview in his office
in Dubai, Razzak acknowledged that he had used the license to import more than
$500 million in gold into Pakistan, and that he had travelled to Islamabad
several times to meet with Bhutto and Zardari. But he denied that there had been
any corruption or secret deals. "I have not paid a single cent to Zardari," he
said. Razzak claims that someone in Pakistan who wished to destroy his
reputation had contrived to have his company wrongly identified as the
depositor. "Somebody in the bank has cooperated with my enemies to make false
documents," he said.
Fatima Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto's niece, and others have publicly accused Bhutto
of complicity in the killing of her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 by uniformed
police officers while she was Prime Minister.
Submitted by a Mujahid