Foreign Funding case: PTI suffers setback as ECP rejects plea to exclude petitioner

ISLAMABAD: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf suffered another setback Thursday when the Election Commission of Pakistan rejected its two applications seeking the exclusion of the petitioner from the foreign funding case. The rejection came through a five-page order, issued here. Through its applications, the PTI had also demanded that all records of the case, including the documents requisitioned through the State Bank of Pakistan, should not be shared with the petitioner and PTI founding member Akbar S Babar, who had filed the case in November 2014.

When the three-member ECP bench resumed the hearing, the PTI once again filed an adjournment motion on the grounds that its senior lawyers were busy in higher courts. The adjournment motion was turned down and the order dismissing the two PTI applications was announced.

In the order, the ECP said, “We have observed that the issues which have already been decided through series of litigation are being raised over and over again unnecessarily which if continued would never end the litigation. Therefore, we expect that the parties would assist the commission in proper way and avoid prolonging the proceedings enabling the commission to conclude the same within the shortest-possible time”.

Afterwards, the Election Commission directed the petitioner’s counsel, Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah, who is assisted by Badar Iqbal Chaudhery, to start arguing on the merits of the case in the light of the Scrutiny Committee Report. Shah briefed the commission on the existing laws that only permit an individual Pakistani to donate to a political party. He said the law only allows a registered political party in Pakistan to operate at the national, provincial and local levels; it does not allow a political party to be registered abroad nor does it allow a political party to operate beyond the jurisdiction of Pakistan or to open accounts abroad for collection of funds, which the PTI continues to operate and keep secret from the ECP.

Shah said the Scrutiny Committee developed an 11-point document scrutiny criterion, which was kept secret thus violating the number one criteria of the Scrutiny Committee’s Terms of Reference. As evidence, not a single Scrutiny Committee Order sheet reflects sharing of these 11 document scrutiny criterion with the complainant. He said despite several inadequacies and inaccuracies of the Scrutiny Committee Report, which have been pointed out in the Review Report, the Scrutiny Committee has substantiated with facts that indeed the PTI received massive prohibited and foreign funding of millions of dollars and billions of rupees. He said his auditors have prepared soft copies of all the data acquired through the State Bank of Pakistan to ensure that each figure is backed with references to the official record made available to the petitioner.

Shah said at least US$7.3 million and 853 million rupees have been received from prohibited and foreign sources that include foreign companies and foreign individuals.

He added the Scrutiny Committee has substantially verified the petitioner’s allegations of illegal funding from the USA and other countries. He said the Scrutiny Committee verified the petitioner’s allegation of transfer of over three million dollars remitted in PTI bank accounts through two US companies (PTI LLC–5975 & PTI LLC–6160) registered in the USA under the authorization of the PTI Chairman Imran Khan.

He emphasized that the two companies were first registered in the US before registration as PTI agents before the Foreign Registration Act or FARA. The Chief Election Commissioner, Sikandar Sultan Raja, decided to adjourn the proceedings until March 31.