Zardari Corruption Probe Alive in Switzerland

[Riaz Haq]

While the news of President Musharraf's resignation and Asif Zardari's nomination for president occupy the big headlines, the renewed reports of the continuing Swiss probe into corruption allegations against Zardari are also vying for attention in the same week.

Swiss Judge Daniel Devaud has "confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the prosecutor's office was still investigating "aggravated" money-laundering offenses. Likewise, Jacques Python, a Geneva lawyer hired by Pakistan to work with Swiss authorities on the corruption case, said he had every reason to believe that the Geneva prosecutor's investigation was still open. And Alec Reymond, a lawyer who had represented Bhutto in connection with the Swiss investigation, also says the case is still open."

In 1997, after Zardari had been imprisoned on suspicion of corruption, Judge Devaud found that Bhutto herself had purchased a necklace worth 117,000 British pounds from a London jeweler—using cash and a bank transfer from the account of Bomer Finance, a British Virgin Islands company, which the magistrate said was jointly controlled by Bhutto and Zardari. (Her supporters claimed this allegation was based on trumped-up evidence supplied by her political enemies. Bhutto herself reportedly claimed her husband had bought the necklace but never told her about it).

According to Newsweek's Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff, Judge Devaud's investigations in 2003 resulted in a series of court orders against Bhutto, Zardari and one of their Swiss lawyers, Jens Schlegelmilch. The orders, akin to misdemeanor guilty findings by a U.S. justice of the peace, were issued by the Swiss judge, an investigating magistrate in Geneva who has handled many high-profile investigations into the alleged laundering of corrupt payments through Switzerland by foreign politicians. The full text of Devaud's orders can be read at a NAB site here.

As to the outcome of the Swiss prosecution, some legal experts believe that Swiss prosecutors have three possible courses of action: close the case entirely, prosecute it by bringing it into a superior court or arrange the Swiss version of a plea bargain, in which money seized by Swiss authorities during the investigation probably would be confiscated or handed over to charity, but charges would be settled without any prison sentences.

In June 2008, a senior PPP leader and president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association, Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, who was interior minister in Benazir Bhutto's first government, told James Traub of the New York Times that most of the corruption and criminal cases against PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari which were dropped recently in Pakistan were justified, and that the PPP was a feudal political party led by a figure (Zardari) accused of corruption and violence. After a moment's reflection, Ahsan further added, “The type of expenses that she had and he has are not from sources of income that can be lawfully explained and accounted for.”

The charges of corruption will likely haunt Zardari for the rest of his life. The way for him to leave a better legacy is by renouncing the amnesty he received from President Musharraf and by offering to go through a fair trial to clear his name.

Related Links:

House of Graft by New York Times

Can the West Help End Corruption in Developing Nations? on Haq's Musings

Bhutto's New York Apartment , A Luxurious East Side Penthouse

Asif Zardari wikipedia entry

Is Zardari Guilty? on PakAlumni Worldwide

[Riaz Haq]

Here are a couple of excerpts from "Playing with Fire" by Pamela Constable:

"Sugar is critical commodity in a country (Pakistan) where people consume vast amounts of sweet tea, soft drinks, and cakes, using about 4 million metric tons of sugar a year. .....Sugar is also very profitable. Pakistan is among the top five producers of sugar cane in the world, employing more than two million seasonable laborers at harvest time, and sugar refining is the second largest agribusiness after flour milling. According to National Accountability Bureau, a majority of country'd eighty-plus sugar mills are owned by political families, including Sharifs and Bhuttos, as well as members of parliament and several military-controlled enterprises."

"In Pakistan, the sugar industry is actually a political industry in which powerful politicians on all sides are involved", said a 2009 statement from the Sugar Mills Workers Federation that described how the big millers cheat mall growers through fake middlemen, then manipulate sugar prices by pressuring the government to stimulate or discourage exports depending on how much cane has been harvested."

"Throughout the 1990s, during two periods of rule by Sharifs and two by his archrial Benazir Bhutto, the privatization process became a game of grab and run. Investing of investing in solid projects, many business groups colluded with corrupt officials to make quick profits. They borrowed huge sums (from state-owned banks) without collateral, created and dissolved ghost factories, purchased state assets at token prices, avoided paying taxes, defaulted on shaky loans, or deferred paying them indefinitely....Major defaulters and beneficiaries of loan write-offs, granted by both the Bhuttos and Sharif governments, included some of Pakistan's wealthiest business families-- Manshas, Saigols, Hashwanis, Habibs, Bhuttos and Sharifs......using the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the (Musharraf) regime (after year 2000) went to prosecute eighteen hundred cases of corruption to recover nearly $3.4 billion in assets."

https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-wU1aVyM9IC&pg=PA40&lpg=...

[Riaz Haq]

By the time he was ousted from power, Zulfikar had become so convinced of his own greatness and indispensability that he did not believe the generals would dare hang him. As I shall describe, there is good reason to believe that he only came to realise that he would actually be hanged a few hours before it happened. As for Benazir, her continued engagement in politics was not just a case of giving up the comforts of Dubai and New York so that she could fight for her ideals. Her political comeback in 2007 also enabled her to get all the legal cases against her overturned. The amnesty she secured from General Musharraf scuppered a Swiss trial in which there was a very high chance she would have been convicted of, among other things, using money from bribes to buy a necklace worth $175,000.

Bennett-Jones, Owen. The Bhutto Dynasty (pp. 14-15). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.



Ghulam Murtaza’s experience entrenched the Bhuttos’ view that there was always a way around legal cases. It is a view that has recurred across the generations. By working within the legal system to secure acquittals, the Bhuttos were taking advantage of what many colonial administrators saw as a weakness in their judicial arrangements. If a British official such as Mayhew made accusations against someone such as Ghulam Murtaza and the court found him innocent, then Mayhew’s authority was undermined. From the point of view of the Bhuttos, however, the system meant they could behave in their locality much as they always had and then work on securing exoneration in the courts. Some landowners tried to reject the British system altogether. The Bhuttos played a subtler game of securing their objectives by working within it. For over a century now, many Bhuttos, from Ghulam Murtaza through to Bilawal, seem to have believed that making legal accusations against them is a political tool wielded by opponents.

Bennett-Jones, Owen. The Bhutto Dynasty (p. 31). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.