Momo said:
I agree with Nazir Naji in that Zardari is better than all past presidents bar Fazal Ilahi Choudhry and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Let's hope Zardari shows some vision and maturity, and justifies the hopes invested in him.
I think, he is worse choice for pakistan.
Look at his corruption history...
Corruption
A 1998 New York Times investigative report[2] claimed that Pakistani investigators had documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland, with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated that Zardari offered exclusive rights to Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari. The article also said a Dubai company received an exclusive license to import gold into Pakistan for which Asif Zardari received payments of more than $10 million into his Dubai-based Citibank accounts. The owner of the company denied that he had made payments to Zardari and claims the documents were forged.
Bhutto maintained that the charges levelled against her and her husband were purely political.[3][4] An Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) report supports Bhutto's claim. It presents information suggesting that Benazir Bhutto was ousted from power in 1990 as a result of a witch hunt approved by then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The AGP report says Khan illegally paid legal advisers 28 million rupees to file 19 corruption cases against Bhutto and her husband in 1990-92.[5]
The prosecutors had alleged that their Swiss bank accounts contained £740 million.[6] Zardari also bought a neo-Tudor mansion and estate worth over £4 million in Surrey, England, UK.[7][8] The Pakistani investigations have tied other overseas properties to Zardari's family. These include a $2.5 million manor in Normandy owned by Zardari's parents, who had modest assets at the time of his marriage.[2] Bhutto denied holding substantive overseas assets.
Zardari and his wife Benazir denied corruption allegations ever since they were first levelled in 1990.[9] In August 2004, Zardari admitted owning the £6.35m estate in Surrey, England, including a 20-room mansion and two farms on 365 acres, or 1.5 km², of land which the Pakistani authorities had alleged was bought with the proceeds of corruption.[10] He was given the nick name "Mr ten-percent" because that was his cut in every corrupt deal which was happening in Pakistan at the time.[11]
French, Polish, Spanish, and Swiss documents have fuelled the charges of corruption against Bhutto and her husband.[citation needed] They faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks.[12] Asif Ali Zardari spent several years in prison on corruption charges.[13] After being released on bail in 2004,[14] Zardari suggested that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.[15]
[edit] Switzerland
On 23 July 1998, the Swiss Government handed over documents to the government of Pakistan which relate to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband.[16] The documents included a formal charge of money laundering by Swiss authorities against Zardari. The Pakistani government had been conducting a wide-ranging inquiry to account for more than $13.7 million frozen by Swiss authorities in 1997 that was allegedly stashed in banks by Bhutto and her husband. The Pakistani government recently filed criminal charges against Bhutto in an effort to track down an estimated $1.5 billion she and her husband are alleged to have received in a variety of criminal enterprises.[17] The documents suggest that the money Zardari was alleged to have laundered was accessible to Benazir Bhutto and had been used to buy a diamond necklace for over $175,000.[18] The PPP has responded by flatly denying the charges, suggesting that Swiss authorities have been misled by false evidence provided by the Government of Pakistan.
On 6 August 2003, Swiss magistrates found Bhutto and her husband guilty of money laundering.[19] They were given six-month suspended jail terms, fined $50,000 each and were ordered to pay $11 million to the Pakistani government. The six-year trial concluded that Bhutto and Zardari deposited in Swiss accounts $10 million given to them by a Swiss company in exchange for a contract in Pakistan. The couple said they would appeal. The Pakistani investigators say Zardari opened a Citibank account in Geneva in 1995 through which they say he passed some $40 million of the $100 million he received in payoffs from foreign companies doing business in Pakistan.[20] In October 2007, Daniel Zappelli, chief prosecutor of the canton of Geneva, said he received the conclusions of a money laundering investigation against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on 29 October, but it was unclear whether there would be any further legal action against her in Switzerland.[21]
The money was allegedly stashed in Swiss banks.[22] The public proceedings were required to be dropped against Bhutto due to her death; but the proceedings were still continued against Zardari until end of August 2008.[23] In the end of August, however, all of the cases against him in Swiss courts were closed, leaving him with all 60 million dollars (41 million Euros) restored, which were frozen due to alleged money-laundering case against him.[24]
[edit] Zardari's challenge to his critics
On the news of Chairman Zardari's receipt of $60 million, he quickly denied the allegation. He even declared that he would give half of all the money ($30 million) to any person who proved him the recipient.
[edit] Poland
The Polish Government has given Pakistan 500 pages of documentation relating to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband. These charges are in regard to the purchase of 8,000 tractors in a 1997 deal.[25][26] According to Pakistani officials, the Polish papers contain details of illegal commissions paid by the tractor company in return for agreeing to their contract.[27] It was alleged that the arrangement "skimmed" 103 million rupees ($2 million) in kickbacks.[28] "The documentary evidence received from Poland confirms the scheme of kickbacks laid out by Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto in the name of (the) launching of Awami tractor scheme", APP said. Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari allegedly received a 7.15% commission on the purchase through their front men, Jens Schlegelmilch and Didier Plantin of Dargal SA, who received about $1.969 million for supplying 5,900 Ursus tractors.[29]
[edit] France
Potentially the most lucrative deal alleged in the documents involved the effort by Dassault Aviation, a French military contractor. French authorities indicated in 1998 that Bhutto's husband, Zardari, offered exclusive rights to Dassault to replace the air force's fighter jets in exchange for a five percent commission to be paid to a corporation in Switzerland controlled by Zardari.[30]
At the time, French corruption laws forbade bribery of French officials but permitted payoffs to foreign officials, and even made the payoffs tax-deductible in France. However, France changed this law in 2000.[31]
[edit] Helicopter scandal
In 1998-1999, an enquiry was conducted by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to investigate the matter regarding the purchase of the helicopters. The case involves defrauding substantive sum of $2.168 million and $1.1 million public money. The record shows that the case was not pursued properly nor diligently. FIR No 1 of 1998 was registered with Federal Investigation Agency, State Bank Circle Rawalpindi on the complaint of the Cabinet Division. A thorough investigation was conducted by the committee headed by Chaudhry Muhammad Barjees Tahir and two other members, namely Faridullah Jamali and Jamshaid Ali Shah. During this investigation the committee Chair Barjees Tahir summoned both the former President Farooq Leghari and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto along with others, and they were investigated. The case received extensive media coverage both inside and outside Pakistan. The recommendations of the committee, obtained from the file, are as under:
6.1: FIR may be lodged against (1) Malik Allah Yar Khan of Kalabagh (2) Zia Pervez Hussain (3) Dr M.A. Khan and criminal proceedings be instituted against them defrauding the government.
6.2: The amount of $2.168 million be recovered from Malik Allah Yar Khan, Zia Pervez Hussain and Dr M.A. Khan by attaching their properties etc in Pakistan or abroad for this purpose. FIA may be directed to take steps to recover this money through Interpol, if necessary. Any banker or foreign national involved in this fraud may also be taken to task by the Federal Investigation Agency.
6.3: As Benazir Bhutto, she is clearly responsible for this loss to exchequer as major decisions in respect of this contract were taken with her approval or direction and passed on to the Cabinet Division through former PS PM (Ahmad Sadiq). FIR may be registered against her for causing loss to state by misuse of her authority as PM, and criminal proceedings be initiated.
6.4: Farooq Leghari knows that his name has visibly come up in this case. He has tried to plead innocent. It is unimaginable that those operating in this scandal could have easy access to the top bureaucrats like Cabinet Secretary, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and even to the Prime Minister herself without the backing and active support of the President. FIR against him must also be registered and criminal proceedings initiated.
6.5: As for the senior civil servants involved in the case, Ahmad Sadiq former PS PM, Humayun Faiz Rasul and Sahibzada Imtiaz former Cabinet Secretary, no action can be taken against them at this stage as they already stand retired/superannuated.
The case was further referred to the National Accountability Bureau in 2000-02 but no action was taken.
[edit] Western Asia
In the largest single payment investigators have uncovered, a gold bullion dealer in Western Asia was alleged to have deposited at least $10 million into one of Zardari's accounts after the Bhutto government gave him a monopoly on gold imports that sustained Pakistan's jewellery industry. The money was allegedly deposited into Zardari's Citibank account in Dubai. Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, stretching from Karachi to the border with Iran, has long been a gold smugglers' haven. Until the beginning of Bhutto's second term, the trade, running into hundreds of millions of dollars a year, was unregulated, with slivers of gold called biscuits, and larger weights in bullion, carried on planes and boats that travel between the Persian Gulf and the largely unguarded Pakistani coast.
Shortly after Bhutto returned as Prime Minister in 1993, a Pakistani bullion trader in Dubai, Abdul Razzak Yaqoob, proposed a deal: in return for the exclusive right to import gold, Razzak would help the government regularise the trade. In November 1994, Pakistan's Commerce Ministry wrote to Razzak informing him that he had been granted a licence that made him, for at least the next two years, Pakistan's sole authorised gold importer. In an interview in his office in Dubai, Razzak acknowledged that he had used the licence to import more than $500 million in gold into Pakistan, and that he had travelled to Islamabad several times to meet with Bhutto and Zardari. But he denied that there had been any corruption or secret deals. "I have not paid a single cent to Zardari," he said. Razzak claims that someone in Pakistan who wished to destroy his reputation had contrived to have his company wrongly identified as the depositor. "Somebody in the bank has cooperated with my enemies to make false documents," he said
Fatima Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto's niece, and others have publicly accused Bhutto of complicity in the killing of her brother Murtaza Bhutto in 1996 by uniformed police officers while she was Prime Minister.[36]
source: wikipedia
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