Kh Asif accuses Imran of laundering funds through his charities

• Minister charges PTI chief of whitening his black money by taking advantage of amnesty schemes
• Asif demands Imran be held accountable for three generations, especially whatever he inherited

Minister for Defence Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Saturday targeted Imran Khan for what he said his failure to establish a money trail for a flat he owns in London, saying that it was now the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman’s turn to be held accountable.

Earlier on Saturday, it had emerged that the PTI chairman could not submit complete financial records to the Supreme Court in a case pertaining to his ownership of assets in London. Addressing a press conference in Sialkot, Khawaja Asif accused Imran of investing charity money – meant for Shaukat Khanum and the Namal College – in France and Oman.

He said that Imran’s accountability should be very different from that of Nawaz Sharif, as the PTI leader oversaw the dispensation of donations while the prime minister was only being held accountable for his personal wealth.

“We need to find out whether all of these institutions are being used to launder money,” he said while pointing out towards the two social welfare projects. He insisted that Imran should not hide behind his institutions when he was held accountable. “Nawaz Sharif did not ask to be exempted, although he had the right. The law should be the same for Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan,” he said.

Asif also accused the PTI chief of whitening his black money by taking advantage of amnesty schemes. The amnesty schemes allowed people to repatriate wealth in return for paying one per cent in lieu of unpaid taxes on them, he clarified. “The past three to four years have proven you are ‘Double Shah’,” Asif said, referring to a notorious fraud who ran a Ponzi scheme in Pakistan.

“By the time money made its way into cricket, you had begun other businesses,” he said, asking how Imran had been able to build his assets. Moving on to Panama Papers and the Supreme Court’s pending ruling on the matter, he said that there was no example in history of the way Nawaz Sharif was held accountable.

Demanding that Imran also be held accountable for three generations, especially whatever he inherited from his father, Asif said that they would not let him avoid accountability. To a question, he stated that his party was not even considering the possibility of the prime minister’s disqualification by the Supreme Court. Therefore, no name, including his own, was under consideration for the premiership in case Nawaz Sharif had to step down.

Downplaying a statement made by the prime minister in which he accused the opposition of being puppets, he said that the statement was being misconstrued. On his rumoured fallout with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, he said that disagreement was a facet of democracy and that his differences with Nisar were a personal matter.

“At the end of the day, all of us have to say amen to what the leadership decides,” he told a questioner. To a question, he said that Imran’s divorced wife was still sending him millions of rupees. “How is it possible,” he asked. “This is something the PTI chief needs to tell the public,” he said. To another question, he said that the entire PML-N was united behind Nawaz Sharif.