Foreign funds case: ECP to examine PTI’s accounts

• Four-member ECP bench decides not to share documents with petitioner
• Babar says PTI’s funding details not contain money trail or funding history

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday decided to scrutinise documents submitted by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) regarding the party’s finances without sharing them with Akbar S Babar, a former PTI leader and petitioner in the case.

The petitioner filed a case before the ECP in 2014. The party avoided submitting the required documents for nearly two years for one reason or the other; first approaching the Supreme Court to challenge the commission’s jurisdiction in the matter and later, challenging the maintainability of the case before the high court.

After months of foot-dragging, the PTI finally submitted account statements and documents detailing the funding it received from foreign sources over the past seven years to the ECP on Sept 18 despite being given several ‘last warnings’ by the commission which went largely ignored to submit the required documents.

Babar’s lawyer insisted before the four-judge ECP bench, headed by Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza, that the PTI had not submitted the complete details of its finances. PTI’s lawyer Saqlain Haider maintained that all relevant financial details had been shared with the ECP.

The bench decided to scrutinise the PTI’s bank accounts, but said that the documents would not be shared with the petitioner. “The account details will not be provided to the petitioner unless the Islamabad High Court asks the ECP to share the information,” Justice Raza said.

Following the ECP hearing, Babar told media that the funding details submitted by the PTI do not contain any details of money trail or funding history. “I will give proof of all this. Not only have they tampered evidence but they are now changing records of companies in the US that were established for fundraising,” he said.

LETTER TO US ENVOY: He said that he was currently drafting a letter to the US ambassador, urging the authorities to take action against these companies. Babar also said that donors of the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital have been documented as donors of the party. “Imran Khan’s disqualification is the logical conclusion of these cases,” he said.

The case was filed on Nov 14, 2014 by Babar, after he developed differences with the PTI chairman over internal corruption and abuse of laws governing political funding. The petitioner had alleged that nearly three million dollars in illegal foreign funds were collected through two offshore companies, registered under Imran’s signature, and that money was sent through illegal ‘hundi’ channels from the Middle East to accounts of the party employees.