Pakistan has announced that it would ban former president Asif Ali Zardari from travelling abroad following allegations of money laundering, as the nation marked 11 years since his wife, prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry told reporters in Islamabad that Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur were among 172 people involved in cases of money laundering and use of fake bank accounts.
“All the 172 names ... will be added to the ECL (Exit Control List),” he said.
Zardari, co-chairman of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and who was president from 2008 until 2013, has long been the subject of corruption allegations, and is widely known in Pakistan as “Mr Ten Per Cent”.
The announcement coincided with the 11th death anniversary of his spouse and two-time former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack during an election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.
Earlier this week Chaudhry said a joint investigation team (JIT) had found evidence of how Zardari allegedly laundered money through fake bank accounts and companies.
“I hope Zardari will now take the JIT seriously,” he said yesterday, adding that his government would not spare anyone involved in plundering national wealth. “This is not the old Pakistan where people will compromise. The independent accountability process will continue.”
When asked about Zardari’s counsel Lateef Khosa’s comment that the former president will be arrested before December 31, Chaudhry replied: “Inshallah. What can I say about it.”
Zardari has meanwhile dismissed the allegations, branding the government an instrument of the powerful military and slamming Prime Minister Imran Khan at a rally marking his wife’s death in the Bhutto family’s ancestral town of Larkana, in southern Sindh province.
“They know nothing but how to appear on TV channels and make absurd comments and speeches. They lack even basic intelligence,” he said of Khan’s government in unusually fiery comments.
The PPP co-chairman said that he had faced the opponent’s tactics earlier too, and will not back down from facing them again.
“They have started to sound like a broken record … apart from uttering gibberish on television, they don’t know what to do,” he remarked.
He said that PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is his and Benazir Bhutto’s son, and no one can scare him.
“We are all Bhuttos and we are ready to fight them on every front including the courts,” said the former president.
“Those who know how to work know that 100 days are more than enough,” said Zardari, adding that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government got ample time to deliver through governance.
The PPP co-chairman, while heavily criticising the government, said that the PTI-led government thoroughly lacks competence and fresh perspective to govern.
Khan, who came to power in July, has vowed to squash rampant corruption and recover billions siphoned from the country as his government scrambles to shore up Pakistan’s deteriorating finances and fast-depleting foreign exchange reserves.
Zardari’s travel ban comes days after former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption on Monday, the latest in a long string of court cases against him.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from politics for life over graft allegations in 2017, ousting him from power.
His Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) was defeated by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the July polls.
A Pakistani court established a commission in September to investigate the scourge of corruption, finding that at least $400mn had passed through “thousands of false accounts”, using the names of impoverished people.
The commission said some 600 companies and individuals “are associated with the scandal”.
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