Details of IB funds misuse presented before Supreme Court
By: Usman Manzoor
ISLAMABAD: More facts have been presented to the Supreme Court on the misuse of Intelligence Bureau’s funds during 1997 to 1999 when the political elite allegedly used IB’s money against political rivals and favourite journalists were showered with millions.
Asad Kharal, a journalist, has submitted these facts and the court has made them part of the record of the main case in which misuse of Rs270 million IB funds by PPP in 2008 is being discussed.
Besides IB’s withdrawal of Rs270 million in 2008, it also involved siphoning off millions of rupees in 1998-99 (November 1998 to October 1999) during Nawaz Sharif tenure before Pervez Musharraf coup as well, the SC has been told.
Brief of the facts includes:
– Millions of rupees of IB fund were not only distributed among journalists but also its major chunk had been spent to materialise the cases against the rival politicians, Benazir Bhutto and President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari inside and outside the country. The secret funds, which IB got under different supplementary grants, were supposed to utilise it for the purchase of journalists and to make comprehensive cases against PPP’s leadership. This huge amount had been distributed among different persons on the special directions of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif through his two close aides – then chairman Ehtisab Cell Saifur Rehman and then Sharif’s Principal Secretary Saeed Mehdi.
– IB also transferred major chunks of the secret fund – about Rs100 million – abroad though illegal channels i.e. Hawala/Hundi after changing the Pak currency into foreign currency.
This amount received by the IB through supplementary grants for this specific purpose on the direction of then prime minister, whose close aide conveyed the message to the then IB Chief to transfer these amounts abroad to some individuals, front men including lawyers who prosecuted the cases against Benazir and Asif Zardari. More than Rs100 million were spent on the materialisation and pursuance of cases against Zardari and Bhutto in the Swiss courts.
Various telephonic conversations of political rivals, even judges of the superior courts, were recorded by the agency’s technical wing without the approval of the then prime minister and even the then DG IB.
Millions of IB’s secret funds were also used for accommodation and transportation purposes for dignitaries and their relatives. All these amounts were earlier transferred by the federal government in the State Bank of Pakistan and later withdrawn by the IB and not a penny was transferred to any one through bank account(s) nor paid any one through cheque or bank draft but were distributed among different persons in cash through concerned staffers of the IB.
Most of these amounts distributed through IB officials in cash and the said officials also noted these transactions in their diaries with details of amount, date and name of the recipient(s).
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