The government of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was supported and funded by global terrorist Osama bin Laden at some point during the 1990s, said Pakistan’s former envoy to the United States Abida Hussain.
In an interview with Samaa on Saturday, the former ambassador said that the claims that OBL supported Nawaz are true. She, however, added that the story of Nawaz-OBL relationship is a “complicated one”.
Abida Hussain also talked about Pakistan’s nuclear programme, saying Nawaz Sharif was not aware of the developments regarding the project due to an unfriendly relationship with then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
She said that the nuclear programme was completed in 1992 and not 1983, adding that Pakistan was under a lot of pressure from US envoys and lawmakers to roll back the programme.
Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda chief who was killed by the US special forces in a midnight raid in Abbottabad in May 2011, was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks that left over 3,000 people dead. These attacks resulted in the US invasion of Afghanistan — a 20-year-long conflict that has claimed countless lives.
Bin Laden made headlines last year when PM Imran Khan called him a “shaheed” during a National Assembly session.
“Pakistanis were deeply embarrassed when Americans killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Shaheed kar diya [was martyred]. But what happened after that? The entire world hurled abuses at us. Our ally [the US] entered our country and killed someone without even telling us. It was a big humiliation,” he said before going on to describe the drone attacks as the second set of incidents that embarrassed the country.
Transparency International (TI) — a Berlin-based international non-governmental organisation combating global corruption — on Thursday released a new report, according to which, the country under the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, for the second consecutive year, has witnessed more corruption than it did in the outgoing year of the former ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
According to TI’s global report on the 2020 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), while Pakistan’s ranking and CPI score in 2019 dropped from 117 to 120 and from 33 to 32, respectively, the ranking has now fallen down to 123 and CPI score to 31 in 2020.
The report comes at a time when the Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan-led government boasts of the success of its promised accountability drive against opposition lawmakers and government officials. The same has time and again been termed as “political victimisation” by those on the radar of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Before the second consecutive drop, Pakistan witnessed a slight improvement in the 2018 CPI, scoring a point higher than in 2017 but remaining unchanged in the rankings. The country scored 33 out of 100 on the index — one point better than its score of 32 in 2017 and 2016. Its ranking, however, remained unchanged at 117 out of 180 countries, in 2018.
TI’s annual report on CPI is formulated on the basis of input from 13 international agencies. In the case of Pakistan, however, the assessment of eight agencies is taken into account. These include the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey; the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment; the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index; the Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index; the Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service; the Global Insight Country Risk Ratings; the IMD World Competitiveness Center World Competitiveness Yearbook Executive Opinion Survey; and the Varieties of Democracy project’s findings.
Pakistan in the last 11 years had improved its index score from 23 in 2010 to 33 in 2018. However, never in the said time period had Pakistan been assessed to have performed negatively when compared to the previous year, which has now happened twice.
Pakistan paid Broadsheet, an asset recovery firm registered in the Isle of Man, Rs4.65bn after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) broke an agreement with it three years after it was signed in 2000.
After its formation in 1999 by then military dictator Pervez Musharraf, NAB approached Broadsheet to recover overseas assets of at least 200 Pakistanis, particularly the Sharif family. However, the deal fell through in 2003, with NAB saying that the recovery firm had stopped investigations; Broadsheet had accused NAB of hampering its probe to locate the offshore assets of Pakistanis.
The broken accord was the start of an 18-year-long legal battle between the two parties. In 2008, NAB reached a settlement with a former Broadcast LLC official, Jerry James. The bureau paid at least $1.5million to James to settle the case even though the company was being liquidated and the liquidator was not a party to the deal.
Though NAB claimed it had reached a settlement with Broadsheet, the firm said James had nothing to do with it at the time of the signing of the agreement. The money paid to James didn’t reach the original Broadsheet, its CEO had claimed and filed a case in a UK court for arbitration in the matter in 2012.
The UK judge decided the matter in favour of Broadsheet, the claimant. It said Broadsheet LLC was entitled to recover damages for the wrongful repudiation of the ARA [asset recovery agreement]. The award declared that James had no authority from the claimant after March 2005 to enter into a settlement agreement with NAB. The judge said the deal was “wrongful and deliberate to financially hurt the original Broadsheet LLC, Isle of Man”.
The court held that while negotiating with the fraudulent company, NAB representative Ahmer Bilal Soofi was aware that the original company was in liquidation, and he signed the wrongful deal knowingly.
Finally, the court ordered NAB to pay $21.58m plus interest to Broadsheet LLC in damages over the breach of the agreement. Due to interest rates, the award amount reached $28.7 million by December 2020.
According to the judgement, a total of $21.58 million has to be recovered and given to Broadsheet of which $1.5 million had to be recovered from the Sharifs on account of Avenfield flats, $19 million for other assets ($802m worth assets are being attributed to Sharifs); $48,760 from Schon Group; $25,000 from Sultan Lakhani; $85,600 from Fauzi Kazmi; $381,600 from Lt Gen (r) Zahid Ali Akbar; Aftab Sherpao $210,000; and $180,000 from Jamil Ansari.
WHY DID NAB PAY $1.5m MONEY TO JAMES?
NAB deliberately tried to cheat Broadsheet LLC by paying $1.5m to James.
According to the court, NAB made two payments to Jerry James, by then the unauthorized person who had incorporated another Colorado company which he had also named “Broadsheet LLC”. The actual company was Broadsheet LLC, an Isle of Man entity. The arbitration court said NAB tried to financially defraud the original Broadsheet LLC by paying James instead of the original company.
Broadsheet had been in the process of liquidation since 2005. And Moussavi, who now owns the company, offered to rescue it in return for a 50 per cent share from the settlement and James agreed. He, however, went behind Moussavi’s back and made a deal with NAB by registering another company named Broadsheet LLC — based in Colorado. The deal was declared shady by the court that asked NAB to pay damages to the original Broadsheet.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Interfaith Harmony and Middle East Affairs Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi said that Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz has not invited former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to visit his Kingdom in case things get complicated in London.
In the wake of a request by the Pakistan government to the United Kingdom for the extradition of Nawaz, reports had been making rounds that the Saudi king had offered Nawaz to come to Saudi Arabia if he ran into problems with the UK government.
Addressing a presser in Lahore, Ashrafi said Saudi Arabia has never intervened in internal and external affairs of Pakistan.
King Salman did not invite Nawaz Sharif to visit his country in line with its “tradition of not intervening” in the internal affairs of Pakistan, he added.
It may be noted here that in a bid to bring Nawaz Sharif back, the government had announced it would cancel Nawaz’s passport on Feb 16.
In Dec 2020, the minister had said that the passport of the ex-PM would be revoked owing to his refusal to return to Pakistan. Nawaz had left for London for a medical check-up in 2019 after his health deteriorated in jail. The ex-premier, who was convicted in two graft cases, has refused to return since.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed has claimed that a Gulf country funded former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s election campaign in the 1990s.
In an interview with Samaa, the minister said that he was a minister in the cabinet of Nawaz Sharif at the time. Rasheed said he was accompanying Nawaz Sharif when it was revealed that the country, that is rich in oil and gas and also has an LNG deal with Pakistan, funded the former PM’s party as a “token of love”.
According to the minister, the Arab country leader asked Nawaz: “Mr Prime Minister, we have given you a token of love on your election expenditure. Did you receive it?”
At this, Nawaz responded that yes, he had received the money, said Rasheed, adding that he asked Nawaz to send them a ‘thank you note’ at least.
It may be noted here that PM Imran Khan had alleged that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) received funds from foreign countries. The comments by the PM came in the wake of the hearings of a foreign funding case against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
In a response to the petition in the foreign funding case, the PTI, that had denied any links to the foreign funding, said that if the two LLC registered after the written instructions of party chief Imran Khan were involved in the illegal act, it would be due to its agents who were managing them in the US.
The case was filed by PTI founding member Akbar S Babar in 2014. The Election Commission of Pakistan had started fresh scrutiny of the PTI accounts — a process going on since March 2018.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif offered a bribe to Broadsheet for abandoning probe against his foreign assets, claimed Broadsheet Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kaveh Moussavi in an interview on Sunday.
In an interview published on YouTube, he said the assets recovery firm “had flatly refused the deal offered by a person claiming himself as the nephew of Nawaz Sharif in 2012”.
According to APP, Moussavi said the firm refused the deal because it did not “negotiate with the crooks”.
The Broadsheet CEO also criticised Nawaz for claiming that the firm hired by military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf to identify assets of Pakistanis, mainly politicians, had exonerated him and his family.
According to Moussavi, the Sharif family has assets not only in the United Kingdom (UK) but across the globe, claiming he still has evidence against the Sharifs.
The Sharif family required plenty of explanation about their resources of amassing these assets, he added. He said his firm was ready to probe the Avenfield Apartments’ purchase by the Sharifs on the request of the Pakistan government.
He said the process of accountability was continuing but after President Musharraf left the office, his successors started hampering the process by not giving them access to information and termination of Broadsheet’s contract.
Broadsheet was asked to go after the Sharif family at start, but it told Gen Musharraf that it would not become a part of a witch-hunt, the CEO said, adding that the probe was subsequently expanded to the previous governments as well.
The payment to Broadsheet under the asset recovery agreement was contracted at 20 per cent of the recovery from each ‘target’, the term used for those being probed. However, the agreement was revoked in 2003.
According to Moussavi, the former president had told him in 2007 about the cancellation of the agreement, saying: “You know Mr Moussavi the Supreme Court told us to have an election and we did so. They came back to power and gutted NAB.”
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz has been spotted speaking to her granddaughter while looking for toys, a video of which has gone viral over the internet.
In the video, reportedly shot at a rest-stop on the Bahawalpur-Lahore route, the PML-N leader was seen speaking to granddaughter Serena, telling her what she had bought for her and asking what else did she want.
“I got red chips for you,” Maryam was seen telling the kid on a video call. “You want to see?” She is then seen heading over to a wall where a toy doctor set is hanging. “Look… look at this doctor’s set Serena. You want this one?” “You want the doctor’s set or do you want the bus?” she asks before reciting the nursery rhyme “Wheels on the Bus”.
“Maryam Nawaz specially stopped at a rest area on her way back to Lahore from Bwp to get things for her granddaughter Serena… Showing her toys on a video call,” PML-N’s Sania Ashiq wrote while tweeting the video.
“The pleasures and joy of being a Nano,” Maryam said while reacting to it. On May 6, 2018, Mehrunisa, Maryam’s daughter and the granddaughter of former prime minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif, gave birth to the baby girl. A picture of the baby in Maryam’s arms had also gone viral later.
In a bid to bring former prime minister Nawaz Sharif back to Pakistan, the federal government will cancel his passport on Feb 16, said Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed on Wednesday.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, the minister said that the passport of the ex-PM will be revoked owing to his refusal to return to Pakistan.
Nawaz had left for London for a medical check-up last year after his health deteriorated in jail. The ex-premier, who was convicted in two graft cases, has refused to return since.
Rasheed also said that now people will be able to obtain visas for any country online.
It may be noted that the interior ministry’s decision to revoke the passport of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader came two months after a request by the National Accountability Bureau.
According to Geo, NAB had sought cancellation of the passport and the CNIC of the ex-PM in OCt. “During the course of proceedings, the said accused [Nawaz] deliberately absented himself from the court and after the due process…whenever accused is arrested, he be produced before the court.”
“In view thereof, copies of the said court order and perpetual non-bailable warrant of arrest are forwarded for processing of blacklisting/cancellation of the passport and blockage / impounding of CNIC of the accused through the Ministry of Interior,” NAB said in an order.
2020 has been a year like no other and with the end of the year approaching, we list you down the pictures that trended this year in Pakistan.
Here we go…
1. When Faisal Vawda brought an army boot with him to a talk show
The PTI federal minister brought an army boot to a live TV programme to troll the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of the opposition for voting in favour of the Army Act in parliament amid their tirades against security forces.
2. Faisal Eidhi making donation to Prime Minister Imran Khan
Faisal Edhi, son of world-famous philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi and chairman of the Edhi Foundation, met Prime Minister Imran Khan and handed over a Rs10 million cheque for the premier’s coronavirus relief fund.
Days later, he tested positive for the virus, leading to speculations if the premier had also been infected.
3. Memes from the Last episode of ‘Mere Pass Tum Ho’
Remember, when MPTH lead character Danish was talking even after the heart rate monitor showed a straight line. From the “straight line” to “Mehwish slap” and ‘do takkay ki aurat’, all the memes were quite lit. Memes then light up the audience after a dull finale.
4. When Maria B landed into hot water
How could we forget Maria B’s fancy chandelier and the memes that broke the internet following the designer’s video with her husband telling the whole story behind the Punjab Police fiasco.
5. ‘I WILL SACRIFICE MY WHOLE LIFE FOR PAKISTAN’
Former Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) senator Sehar Kamran made the headlines for celebrating independence day with great enthusiasm at a Pakistani school in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Sehar was seen encouraging the students all in the spirit of patriotism.
6. Syra and Sheheryar turned up the heat with their photoshoot
Syra Yousuf and Sheheryar Munawar’s photoshoot for a local magazine became the talk of the town with people discussing how hot they look together.
7. When Ishaq Dar had a hard time in HardTalk
The former finance minister, who is residing in London while corruption cases against him worsen back home, recently appeared on the BBC talk show, videos of which went viral over what was claimed to be his “discomfort” on the hot seat.
The host, Stephen Sackur, however, says Dar wanted to be on that show and seemed to enjoy it.
8. Bakhtwar Bhutto Zardari’s Engagment
PPP’s Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari got engaged this year and all eyes were on her corona-exclusive wedding. Her engagement card became controversial when it required guests to provide a coronavirus test result before coming to the engagement but the talk of the town was her shawl. The shawl was embroidered with memories of her family, her favourite things and also her love for food.
9. Nawaz Sharif eating pizza in London
Former PM Nawaz, despite conviction in corruption cases, was allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment.
Currently in London, he has time and again been spotted taking a stroll in the park, dining at a roadside cafe, and most recently, enjoying pizza.
While criticism continues to pour in amid government’s efforts to bring him back, his daughter Maryam Nawaz seems to believe none of the stuff he has been seen doing is bad for his health.
10. Photoshoped picture of Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s hand
PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz was recently trolled by social media users after she shared a supposedly edited picture of the much-awaited Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) rally of the joint opposition in Lahore.
While the opposition claimed it was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, the government and social media users disagreed, advising the opposition leader to “fire her graphic designer”.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that there is a lot of anger in the military over the tirades of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif against the army, but the army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, is putting up with it for the “sake of democracy”.
The PM made these comments in an interview on Samaa TV. “I praise Gen Bajwa today. To attack an army chief in this manner definitely provokes a reaction from the army,” he added.
The PM said that Gen Bajwa was “uncomplicated man”. “If someone else was at the helm of the army, there would have been a strong response by now,” Imran said.
The PM said the opposition was accusing him of being a “puppet” of the establishment, yet they wanted to talk to the establishment. “This means they’re putting pressure on the army to remove a democratic government. This is [their] democratic movement,” he added.
Imran said that asking the military to remove a democratically-elected government was a case of “treason”, as Article 6 applies to this. “The opposition’s second demand is that if the army and ISI chiefs do not remove me, then the army should remove them [the chiefs of army and ISI],” he added.
According to the prime minister, the army was a state department that was subordinate to his government. He said the military has always stood by him in times of crisis.
Speaking on the former government’s troubled relationships with the establishment, Imran said Nawaz was “manufactured by the army against the PPP”. He said he himself received a message from military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq in 1988 that he wanted to make him (Imran) the prime minister.
He said the establishment had helped the PML-N supremo in the 2013 elections but their ties became strained because the establishment did not support him in 2018.
The ex-PM, who is in a self-imposed exile in London, has called out the army many times for its involvement in manipulating the general elections in 2018 to bring Imran Khan to power. Addressing a rally in Gujranwala in Oct, the former PM had called out Gen Bajwa and ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed for alleged manipulation of election results.
