ISLAMABAD, Dec 11 (APP):Pakistanis People’s Party (PPP) doled out hefty amounts to foreign lobbyists to pursue its agenda abroad and ensure its return to power, back in 2008
through NRO, said Parliamentary Secretary for Railways Mian Farrukh Habib on Wednesday.
He said during the last PPP 5-year tenure, it allegedly spent around 5 million US dollars to oblige foreign lobbyists for their personal lobbying in the United States(US).
Addressing a press conference he said “The party paid millions of dollars to their favorite lobbyists like Mark Siegel and others to oblige them for facilitating the party in getting NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) from former President Pervez Musharraf.”
He said the PPP, registered in the US during 1995, had hired lobbyists there and paid them hefty amounts for the personal lobbying of their party leaders in the US that eventually helped them in keeping their politics afloat, back at home.
“There is no record of such payments which were made through various channels from 1995 to 2008,” he added.
“Those lobbyists, who had been receiving 50,000 dollars from 1995 to 2008, starts getting 400,000 dollars to 800,000 dollars after the PPP came to the power in 2008,” he pointed out.
During its tenure from 2008, he alleged that the party used taxpayers’ money to oblige Zardari’s personal lobbyist in the US and gave millions of dollars to the party’s blue-eyed lobbyist Mark Siegel, an American national who also recorded his statement for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination case.
“If we club all such payments, given to the foreign lobbyist during five-year tenure of the party, it would reach to $ 5 million, Farrukh claimed.
He said millions of dollars were transferred from Government account to those lobbyists by appointing Hussain Haqqani at Pakistani Embassy in US.
“What kind of benefit the country got from such lobbyist…whether the relations between Pakistan and US got improved during their stint,” he questioned.
‘How can a government spend millions of dollars on foreign lobbying to get personal benefits, especially when its nation was striving for two times’ meal,” he inquired.
He said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had been asserting that the party did not own any foreign account but on the contrary it was registered in the United Kingdom (UK) and Zubair Gul was appointed as its president.
The party had registered itself in the UK as a private company and nobody knew what kind of agreements it was making with different entities, he said while showing some documents.
Similarly, the PML-N had registered itself in the US and appointed Rohail Dar as its principal-agent, he added.
The Parliamentary Secretary said the PML-N could not declare their party accounts and assets abroad that created doubts of money laundering and illegal funding.
“It seems that the fund had been transferred to the PML-N account through illegal channels as in case of Shehbaz Sharif and Suleman Sharif who have laundered their money abroad via Telegraphic Transfers,” he alleged.
Referring to PPP and PML-N, he said both parties were taking undue benefits of adjournments as the scrutiny committee of Election Commission of Pakistan was hearing their foreign funding cases.
He said the ECP had given two-week times to both the parties to submit details of their foreign funding, adding the government expected from the commission that it would fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.
Farrukh believed that justice would prevail and the looted money of taxpayers would be recovered under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“Service delivery, public welfare and good governance are among the top priorities of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government,” he remarked.
