Altaf to challenge properties case verdict

LONDON: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain has announced that he has instructed his lawyers to launch an appeal against the judgment handed down by Insolvency and Companies Judge Clive Jones, effectively depriving Mr Hussain of six London properties worth around £10 million.

Speaking at a press conference at his party’s Edgware office, the MQM founder criticised the judgment and said that the judge had failed to take into consideration basic facts of how his party was hijacked by Dr Farooq Sattar and other MQM leaders in Karachi who didn’t let Altaf return to the MQM after his August 22, 2016, speech and then his voluntary relinquishing of powers to Dr Farooq Sattar and the Central Coordination Committee (CCC).

Hussain spoke after ICC Judge Clive Jones handed down a decision in the £10 million worth properties case, declaring that the MQM leader and Federal Minister Syed Aminul Haque was right to bring a claim for the Trusts properties; that the real and legitimate MQM was the one based in Pakistan and therefore a beneficiary of the six London properties. After the “disappointing”, “unfair,” and “shocking” decision by the London High Court judge, Altaf Hussain said that the British court has a long-established history of fairness and justice “but this doesn’t mean that a sitting judge knowingly or unknowingly cannot commit a blunder.”

Altaf Hussain said the judge has said that the MQM founder “formed a new association, performing from London after August 22, 2016” and this is laughable because he was the ideologue, founder and lifetime leader of the very party that he had founded as a firebrand student leader in Karachi nearly four decades ago.

Addressing his former loyalists in the MQM who now run the party from Karachi under the leadership of Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui and the claimant Syed Aminul Haque, Altaf Hussain said: “You erased the name of Altaf Hussain from the Constitution of MQM-Pakistan but my name is written in the hearts of millions of people of the Muhajir nation and Pakistan.”

“We have serious reservations about this decision. We are disappointed that the facts advanced by us during the trial were ignored altogether by the judge. The decision that has been delivered has strengthened our resolve. In my 50 years of struggle, I have fought against Pakistan’s corrupt feudal system and dictatorships. No other leader has the track record of political struggle I have. I have never bowed before the dictatorship,” he said.

Altaf Hussain’s solicitor also accompanied him at the press conference. He said: “We were not expecting this kind of decision. The only way ahead for us is to appeal against this and we have already started the process of preparing our appeal.”

Insolvency and Companies Judge Clive Jones, sitting as a High Court Judge in the High Court of Justice Business and Property Court of England and Wales, has ruled that that the MQMP is the real MQM and its members are the true beneficiaries of the Trusts that control London’s properties which are currently under the control of Altaf Hussain.

The judge has ruled that MQM’s founder Altaf Hussain had resigned from MQMP after his 23rd August speech.

ICC Judge Jones has ruled that the lawyer acting for Syed Aminul Haque of MQMP has established that the MQM’s April 2016 Constitution was adopted and “It has not been established that the 2015 Constitution was adopted and on the balance of probability it was not.”