Imran earlier said he knew about Hyderi’s investment

KARACHI: A video from a press conference in August 2012 shows Imran Khan explicitly naming Imtiaz Hyderi in connection with Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust’s offshore investment, saying that Hyderi had given SKMT a letter guaranteeing that the hospital would not face any loss [in the investment] and that the trust’s $3 million was “guaranteed”.

The video is from around the same time that the PTI chairman had filed a defamation case against Khawaja Asif regarding the latter’s allegations of misappropriation and money laundering of SKMT funds.

After Asif’s allegations, Imran had asked the chief justice of the time to hear the case immediately and had said they [the PTI] had “all the facts and figures” regarding Asif’s allegations.

More than ten years on, in an appearance in court on Saturday — via video link — Imran claimed he did not know anything about the decisions made by SKMT and that the board did not consult him before making such decisions.

He said this while accepting that “now” he had come to know that the “hospital invested funds in two offshore companies” and conceding that a $3 million investment was made in 2008 but that the amount was returned in 2015.

The PTI chief also said that the amount [$3 million] had “remained in the possession of HBG Group”. The HBG Group’s chief executive is Imtiaz Hyderi who was reportedly included in the committee that accepted the investment.

The SKMT had recently issued a clarification saying that it was common for charity organisations to create an endowment fund and that its funds had never been misused. The trust had however not disclosed that the CEO of HBG — with whom the money was parked — was also an SKMT trustee.