Former Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari charged in corruption cases

In what is being termed as the crackdown on Ex-PMs, Presidents by the Imran Khan regime in Pakistan, an anti-corruption court charged former Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari in two graft cases, a week after he was indicted in a major money laundering case.

Zardari, 63, the co-chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and husband of the country's first woman prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was present in the Islamabad-based court and pleaded not guilty.

During the hearing, the accountability court indicted 19 others accused in the Park Lane case and 15 others in the Thatta water supply case. The court charged Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur in a mega-money laundering case on September 28. In the Park Lane case, Zardari and his son Bilawal Ali Zardari are accused of purchasing 307 acres of prime property in Islamabad at very low rates using frontmen. In the Thatta water supply case, a private contractor was illegally awarded project contracts. In the money laundering case, it is alleged fake accounts were used by the former president and the other accused to park and launder ill-gotten wealth. The court also rejected Zardari's plea seeking acquittal in all three cases. He was arrested last year by the National Accountability Bureau and probed for months before being released in December on medical grounds.

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Meanwhile on October 3, presiding over the first meeting of a committee recently formed to counter the Opposition, Imran Khan asked his party leaders to devise a legal strategy to bring back former premier Nawaz Sharif from the UK as in the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries it would be difficult to get him extradited, according to a media report. 

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Shahbaz Sharif arrested 

Pakistan's Leader of the Opposition and PML-N chief Shahbaz Sharif was arrested in Lahore on September 29, while an anti-corruption court in Islamabad indicted former president Asif Ali Zardari in a money laundering case, days before joint Opposition's planned protests to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Shahbaz, the younger brother of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was taken into custody from the Lahore High Court's premises, where a large number of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers gathered ahead of the hearing in the Rs 700 crores (USD 41.9 million) money laundering case.

A two-member LHC bench headed by judge Sardar Ahmed Naeem rejected Shahbaz's bail plea after hearing the arguments from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team and his lawyer. The NAB arrested Shahbaz and took him to its Lahore's detention centre. It will produce him to the accountability court for his physical remand.

The Imran Khan government filed the money laundering case against 69-year-old Shahbaz, who served as chief minister of Punjab province from 2008 to 2018, and his family. Before his arrest, Shahbaz told the media that Prime Minister Khan wanted to have him arrested. "It is the unholy alliance of Imran Khan and NAB that wanted to put me behind bars," Shahbaz had said.

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