FIA seeks foreign funding details from Imran Khan

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has made Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan a part of foreign funding investigation by directing him to provide records of all individuals and national and international companies as well as the institutions that have been funding his party.

The FIA Islamabad Zone deputy director, in a letter to the PTI chairman and secretary general, asked for all information in 15 days. According to the text of the FIA letter, the PTI should provide records of all its organisations and trusts since 1996. The record of the amounts received as the membership fee since the establishment of the party should also be provided, said the letter.

The FIA has asked for records of all national and international companies providing funds to the party, as well as business organisations and individuals, asking them to provide separate details of all the amounts received.

In the letter to Imran Khan, it has been asked to provide the annual statement of all the accounts opened till now, besides the list of all the party officials along with their identity card numbers.

The investigators have also sought the names of all those persons who were allowed to operate the party accounts.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had issued a show-cause notice declaring Imran Khan’s affidavit invalid in the PTI prohibited funding case.

A three-member bench, headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, in a unanimous verdict on August 2, ruled that the PTI received funding from prohibited sources.

In its 68-page decision, the ECP stated that the PTI had received funding from the US, while Imran Khan submitted false affidavits from 2008 to 2013. The party received funds from 34 foreigners and Arif Naqvi, it ruled.

Akbar S Babar, one of the founding members of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, had filed an application in the Election Commission on foreign funding of the party back in 2014.

The case was heard for almost eight years before the ECP delivered its verdict.

According to Akbar S Babar, the issue of funds received by the party from prohibited sources was first raised before party chairman Imran Khan in 2011. Later, Akbar S. Babar took the case to the ECP on Nov 14, 2014 and stated that between 2009 and 2013, the PTI collected more than $7.3 million from 12 countries.

Akbar S Babar said that no one knows the real source of these huge amounts of funds received from foreign sources through offshore companies transferred to the bank accounts of the party.