Long running trial of foreign funding case concludes

After taking eight years to wrap up its trial of Imran Khan’s PTI party for receiving financial help from prohibited sources, the ECP reserved its judgement for announcement later.

By Naveed Naqvi

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday concluded its long drawn out trial of a prohibited funding case against former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, reserving its judgement for the time being.

Akbar S Babar, a former PTI leader, had brought the petition to ECP about eight years ago.

During today’s proceedings, the petitioner’s financial expert, Arsalan Wardak, asserted that it stood proven that money was received from Britain. He also highlighted that no one was aware of the origins of the money received from Canada.

The financial expert also pointed out that the donor lists were missing several details. Wardak said that 41 of the 50 banks contacted by the scrutiny committee did not respond to its inquiries, which meant PTI could have more accounts hiding prohibited funding.

Arguing that PTI ignored the principles and the standards of auditing, he claimed that the donations were channeled through PTI’s own companies [registered abroad] instead of third party companies.

Called to the rostrum, Babar said it was significant that a political party was providing details of its funding to the ECP for the very first time in the country’s history.

In his remarks to reporters outside the ECP, Babar thanked those who stood by him in his fight for justice, especially his lawyers and his legal team. He said his objective was to make political parties accountable for where they receive their funding and donations from.

“The objective of this case from start was to make PTI a [precedent]”, he said. “That is why we fought this case. I did not have any personal issues with PTI”. He remembered the many years he devoted to building the PTI from the ground up.