Money-laundering case: PPP demands removal of FIA chief, JIT head

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party has demanded that the director general of Federal Investigation Agency and head of the Joint Investigation Team probing money laundering allegations against Asif Ali Zardari and Faryal Talpur should be removed to ensure a transparent and impartial probe into the allegations.

PPP leaders made the demand on Friday while addressing a press conference at the party’s media cell. Speaking on the occasion, PPP leaders, including Saeed Ghani and Nafisa Shah, termed the money laundering case lodged by the FIA against Asif Ali Zardari and Faryal Talpur an “act of political vindictiveness based on lies and dishonest intentions”. They claimed that the case investigation cannot be impartial with the incumbent FIA DG Bashir Memon and JIT head Najaf Mirza in place.

Ghani, the president of PPP’s Karachi division, said Memon’s brother, who was contesting on a Grand Democratic Alliance ticket in the general elections, had been defeated by PPP’s candidate, while Najaf Mirza, who is a relative of former interior minister Zulfiqar Mirza, was nominated in a case for torturing Asif Ali Zardari while the former president was in jail. He said this was a unique situation where a person accused of torture had been appointed the head of a JIT investigating the complainant. “Everyone knows to what extent the investigation will be fair in the presence of Bashir Memon and Najaf Mirza,” Ghani said.

According to the MPA-elect, the PPP was being penalised for winning the general elections in Sindh. “The case, which pertained to the year 2014, was reopened a few days before the elections,” he pointed out,” he said, questioning why it wasn’t taken up in the four years before the polls. Ghani further said that in the initial stage of the case, Zardari’s name had been mentioned as the witness, but later his name was included in the interim charge sheet, which was being challenged in the high court. The bank account identified by the FIA in the investigation was not at all a suspicious account as it pertained to Zardari Group of Companies, which is a public limited company whose audit is being conducted every year, the PPP leader said.

“The entire FIA investigation is only meant to do character assassination of the leadership of Peoples Party and we strongly condemn such an act,” he said. “In the past too allegations had been levelled against the leadership of Peoples Party, which were later found incorrect. This time too, Peoples Party will face charges of the FIA and will prove them wrong.”