PTI accused of submitting fake documents to SC
By Nasir Iqbal
2017-08-01
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hanif Abbasi on Monday accused the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) of submitting forged documents tothe Supreme Court that show foreign remittances collected from dual nationals or people of Pakistani origin, but hiding the donations from allegedly prohibited sources.
`I am not asking for the party to be banned,oritsfundsconñscated through the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). All I am requesdng is that the party head (Imran Khan) be declared dishonest for issuing a bogus certiñcate to the ECP saying the party did not receive any funds from prohibited sources,` argued senior counsel Mohammad Akram Sheikh on Mr Abbasi`s behalf.He was arguing before a threejudge Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, which had taken up the PML-N leader`s petition seeking the disqualification of Imran Khan and Secretary General Jahangir Khan Tareen.
PTI`s Advocate Anwar Mansoor asked why Khan should be held responsible when he had no information about the funds sent to Pakistan by PTI USA LLC from prohibited sources.
He recalled that Mr Khan had already issued a policy for foreign agents, asking them not to accept any donations coming from questionable sources.
The counsel explained that since such information had surfaced for the first time during the course of this hearing, the party was taking action against its agent.
During the hearing, Justice Umar Ata Bandial wondered how the PTI would account for the discrepancy that the party had received certain funds from prohibited sources and some from legitimate ones. He also asked howthe party had allowed its agent to collect money from such sources, and whether or not the agent should be held responsible.
The chief justice also observed that the individual who audited the party`s funds did not know either, since no details regarding sources of funding were provided to the chartered accountant.
Mr Sheikh argued that in its 700page reply, the PTI had evasively denied the allegation of prohibited sources of funding, but it never claimed that it did not collect any donation from corporations and foreigners. Rather, it had beenstated that the funds that were remitted to PTI Pakistan, from 2010 to date, did not contain any prohibited funding.
He alleged that the list of donors submitted by the PTI in three volumes was false because these lists did not exist on the US Foreign Agents Registration Authority (Fara)website.
This showed that the provided lists were their own creation to fill the gaps that had been highlighted, he argued. He maintained that the total amount shown remitted to the PTI Pakistan from PTI USA LLC (Texas) in Fara`s records betweenFeb 2010 and June 2013 could not be reconciled with the lists provided for the same period to the Supreme Court.
To illustrate, he highlighted a discrepancy of $98,619 from Feb 2010 to June 2013, when the total donations, according to the Fara list, were over two million dollars.
But the total remitted donation was $1.9 million.
Similarly, an analysis of PTI USA L LC (California) also had discrepancies to the tune of $532,234.
The counsel also alleged that a total of 113 entries were copied and pasted twice to make up for thedonations that came from prohibited sources.
Similarly, he alleged the party had showed false accounts for the year 2012-13, which contained repeated entries of donors as well as ghostentries-in clear violation of Fara rules adding that there were multiple donors whose names occurred again and again against huge amounts.
He also maintained that the donor list submitted to the court did not conform to Fara requirements, which called for complete names and addresses as well as manner and time of donation.