Facing corruption probe by NAB and on ECL
When the name of Ali Jahangir Siddiqui (AJS) first cropped up on March 8 as the prime minister’s pick for Pakistan’s envoy to the USA, it raised quite a few eyebrows, questions and hackles, and the chief reaction was ‘nepotism’ or ‘cronyism’, words that are the trade mark of PML-N, with the ‘shadow’ PM advancing them by his odd and now increasingly embarrassing selection of our Man in Washington. No wonder the PM and foreign ministry were tightlipped up to the very last moment before naming the prominent business tycoon. Transparency is not the government’s forte either, and on this occasion its secretive ways have created an awkward situation that can heap more humiliation on the country.
For it transpired, after the media had gotten into the act, that AJS, then and probably still, working as special assistant to the PM, had been metaphorically fiddling his ledgers, earning him the dubious distinction of assisting the NAB, FIA and SECP in their inquiries since March 22, and with his name ordered by NAB to be placed on the Exit Control List on Monday. Reportedly involved in 19 NAB inquiries of corruption, money laundering, and State Bank rules’ violation, there is an alleged major embezzlement case of Rs55 billion against him, another of using his directorship in a financially wobbly investment firm to sell shares at inflated rates, causing financial and government institutions losses of Rs40 billion. But the most brazen aspects of his appointment are his former directorship in Air Blue, a company connected to the PM, and the airlines’ long standing banking relationship with the envoy-designate’s JS bank.
The present tense ties with the US ideally demanded an experienced career diplomat, or an outsider of immaculate standing and repute for the post, but the government, in indecent haste, apparently even avoided prior vetting of its novice appointee by the investigating agencies. The US president has constitutional powers to refuse accreditation papers of an ambassador-designate whose credentials are in serious doubt, and in this instance assent would imply tacit approval of alleged corruption and money-laundering. Withdrawing this name would be an apt and smart move.
