The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday said that Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaf has not submitted the details of its party accounts, including details of funds received from abroad.
A four-member bench of ECP headed by Chief Election Commissioner Justice (r) Sardar Muhammad Raza was hearing the foreign fund irregularities case. Akbar S. Babar, a founding member and former information secretary for the PTI submitted a petition in ECP, seeking details on PTI’s foreign account funds, and irregularities therein.
During the hearing, PTI’ lawyers did not submit any detail of the party’s fund and accounts in the ECP. The hearing was adjourned until December 21.
After talking to media persons outside the ECP, Akbar S Babar said if the PTI chairman believed in accountability, why was he not giving details on any party accounts.
He said that Imran Khan has received billions of rupees from foreign countries in the name of bringing change, adding that the PTI chairman should provide such details in a press conference if he did not want to give these details before the ECP’s bench. He should clear himself from these allegations.
Babar said that Imran khan has filed a petition in the Lahore High Court for a stay order in the case, adding that he himself hides behind stay orders and he levels allegations against others.
In the previous hearing, the petitioner had accused the party of committing financial corruption and violating laws relating to the collection of donations, and their management.
The bench directed ECP officials to start a fresh scrutiny of PTI’s annual statement of assets to ascertain whether the party had mentioned the funds received from the US.
The PTI claimed that details of all funds received had been recorded in the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
However, the bench observed that during scrutiny of the audit reports the PTI counsel had failed to show details of any foreign funds.
The counsel contended that since the ECP had accepted the audit reports it could not question their authenticity.
The chief election commissioner said that since the evidence that the PTI had received foreign funds from forbidden sources had been produced, the ECP had the right to scrutinise the audit reports submitted by the party.
Justice Raza advised the PTI counsel to be careful in his arguments because the matter was extremely sensitive.
Justice (r) Fazlur Rehman, member of the commission from Balochistan, read out relevant clauses that make it mandatory for political parties to submit details of foreign funding.
The CEC asked PTI to submit details about the sources and amounts that they received.
The petitioner’s lawyer contended that the PTI did not acknowledge the receipt of foreign funds and operated a dollar account, which was forbidden under law. The money received could fall in the category of money laundering.
He requested the ECP to make PTI accountable for the millions of dollars raised personally by Imran Khan during numerous fund-raising events in the US, Canada and Europe.
The petitioner said the PTI had been changing its stance. During the previous hearing, he had questioned the authenticity of the evidence regarding over $2 million donations received from the US, from allegedly ‘illegal and prohibited’ sources.
