Rs33bn recovered in fake accounts case so far: Fawad

Ag APP

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry has said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has so far recovered Rs33 billion in former president Asif Ali Zardari’s fake accounts case and the “actual volume of corruption” in the case is approximately five trillion rupees.

In a tweet on Saturday, the minister said the recovered amount is equivalent to about 200 million dollars. At such a recovery level, he said, “one could imagine the scale of corruption in the country and how the past rulers looted the country and Sindh province”. He added that the actual volume of corruption in the fake accounts case was 5,000 billion rupees.

The case first emerged in 2015, when the Federal Investigation Agency began probing former Pakistan Stock Exchange chairman Hussain Lawai. In 2018, the apex court under then chief justice Saqib Nisar took suo motu notice of the pace of the investigation.

Lawai, Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur, and Omni Group’s Anwar Majeed were named in the case. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as well as Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah were also questioned by a joint investigation team that was subsequently formed at FIA’s request.

The JIT had discovered at the time that there were (at the bare minimum) 29 benami accounts and had been used to launder money. In early 2019, the Supreme Court transferred the case to the NAB. The former president denies his involvement in the alleged money laundering.

Most recently, the NAB filed another reference in the probe, accusing Zardari of corruption of Rs8.3 billion. The reference had been filed at an Accountability Court in Islamabad in April 2021, in which Zardari and his stenographer Mushtaq Ahmed were named.

According to the reference, an illegal transaction of Rs8.3 billion was allegedly carried out via Mushtaq Ahmed’s bank account with the money paid to a private housing society — located in a posh area of Karachi — to purchase properties. The reference claims the properties belong to Zardari.

A third accused in the case, already signed a plea-bargain with the NAB and deposited around Rs9 billion to the national exchequer.