Scrutiny body meeting on 13th: ECP orders for expediting PTI’s foreign funding scrutiny process

ISLAMABAD: The ECP Scrutiny Committee probing the PTI foreign funding since March 2018, will meet again on January 13 after the commission once again directed it to expedite the scrutiny process.

The scrutiny stems from the foreign funding case, filed way back in November 2014, alleging glaring irregularities.

The Election Commission, in its meeting a day earlier, expressed concern over the slow process and asked the committee to meet thrice a week and wrap it as early as possible. On its part, the committee in that meeting blamed the lawyers of the parties for the delay due to their busy schedule in the high courts.

However, this is not the first time that the ECP has directed the committee to expedite the scrutiny process, so far with little results. A similar order was passed by the ECP to conclude scrutiny by August 17, 2020.

However, the report submitted by the committee was rejected by the ECP in its order of August 27, 2020 for failing to investigate and authenticate evidence and come to credible conclusions.

When asked to comment on the ECP stance blaming the lawyers for the delay, the petitioner and PTI founding member Akbar S. Babar termed it a misplaced attempt to divert attention from the real issues holding investigation of the PTI foreign funding. Babar said to club PTI’s delaying tactics already certified by ECP with the petitioner’s legal team is misleading and simply not true. He said he has not missed a single hearing of the committee and his legal counsel Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah and Badar Iqbal Chaudhry have rarely missed either.

He then pointed out that the ECP in its October 10, 2019 order had already blamed the PTI of historic abuse of law to delay proceedings in one way or the other. The question remains; why was the accused allowed to delay proceedings?

Babar said it was a matter of record that PTI has sought 24 written or oral adjournments of the committee proceedings on various pretexts. It has filed no less than four applications objecting to, among others, the presence of complainant in the scrutiny proceedings, seeking secrecy and confidentiality of the proceedings.

So the reason for the delay despite over 80 meetings of the committee is simple; when those who are under investigation, influence the investigation process, how can there be progress? He explained that the committee refuses to share the PTI bank statements and other record with the petitioner ‘as the respondent (PTI) seriously opposes it’. Babar said, “We have already submitted written notes before the committee on March 5, 2020 and again on August 13, 2020 challenging the credibility of the scrutiny process for not investigating/authenticating available evidence and its refusal to share 23 authenticated PTI’s bank statements received on the State Bank’s instructions and other documents submitted by the PTI.

Babar said the ECP validated all their concerns in its order of August 27, 2020 when it discredited committee’s report of August 17, 2020 as ‘the committee neither scrutinised the record nor evaluated the evidence from the documents’ after 29 months of meetings.