Swiss cases to be also probed by Azmat Commission

ISLAMABAD: What happened behind the scenes and who struck underhand deals in the Surrey Palace and Swiss corruption cases, involving Asif Ali Zardari and the late Benazir Bhutto? These issues will also be probed by the one-man Inquiry Commission led by Justice (retd.) Azmat Saeed Shaikh constituted to inquire into the Broadsheet saga.

Minister for Information Shibli Faraz when approached told The News that the Commission will also probe why Pakistan lost the legal battle in a London court for funds amounting to £35 million which had been lying untouched in a London bank for 70 years. The London court judgement was in favour of the Nizam of Hyderabad and India and against Pakistan, that had claimed the funds. The high court in London noted in a judgment in 2019: “Nizam VII was beneficially entitled to the fund and those claiming in right of Nizam VII-- the princes and India--are entitled to have the sum paid out to their order.” It added, “Pakistan’s contentions of non-justiciability by reason of the foreign act of state doctrine and non-enforceability on grounds of illegality both fail.”

According to the information minister, the TORs that were suggested by the ministerial committee did not specify the cases as such but the probe would cover all matters, including the Broadsheet scam, the Surrey Palace affair and the Swiss cases scandal allegedly settled in a fishy manner during the last 21 years of NAB’s history.

The government while notifying the Commission will also issue its ToRs, which are expected to be a modified version of what the three-member ministerial committee had suggested.

The Shibli-led ministerial committee had recommended that the probe body examine and fix responsibility on all those involved, and the consequential beneficiaries, in the following five parts: a) the selection and appointment of Trousers LLC, Broadsheet and IAR and signing of the agreement in June 2000 between the GOP and these companies; b) the circumstances relating to the cancellation of the contract with Broadsheet and IAR in Oct 2003; c) the settlement with IAR in January 2008 and the purported settlement in May 2008 with Broadsheet; d) the manner in which the GOP arbitrated the proceedings before the London Court of International Arbitration and litigated the appeal in the High Court of Justice in London; e) the process of making the payment to the claimant and protecting the GOP’s assets in the UK at the enforcement stage of the award.