In a case filed by a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founding member and former central information secretary Akbar S Babar against alleged financial corruption and violation of laws in collecting donations and managing PTI funds, a full bench of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), headed by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza, has ordered PTI to submit full details of foreign funding by the next hearing on May 6.
In the previous hearing held on March 17, PTI had claimed that the details of all the funds received have been duly recorded in the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
During the scrutiny of PTI audit reports, the PTI lawyer failed to show any details of foreign funds in the audit reports as required under the law despite repeated inquiry by the CEC. The PTI lawyer contended that since the audit reports were accepted by ECP at the time of submission, the commission could not question the authenticity of the audit reports now.
The CEC responded that as the matter was disputed and a pile of evidence has been produced which allegedly showed that foreign funds from “forbidden sources” were allegedly received, it had the right to scrutinise audit reports submitted earlier by PTI.
The CEC warned that the matter was extremely sensitive and the PTI’s counsel should be cautious in making arguments that may boomerang.
The ECP member from Balochistan, Justice (r) Fazlur Rehman, read the relevant clauses that demand that political parties must submit details of foreign funding whereas the PTI audit reports show no details.
The PTI lawyer contended that all political parties submitted accounts similar to theirs. The CEC responded that now that the matter was before the commission and in view of the seriousness of the allegations, the PTI must submit full details about source and scale of foreign funding.
The petitioner’s lawyer Ahmed Hasan contended that the PTI initially refused to acknowledge foreign funding whereas it operates a dollar account which is forbidden under the law and all the money received could fall into the category of money laundering.