The burden of accountability

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) manifesto and its entire campaign leading to the 2018 elections was built around the narrative of holding the corrupt accountable. Even today – nearly three-and-a-half-year in the government — crackdown on corruption, holding the past corrupt public office holders accountable and recovering the ill-gotten money remain the main pillar of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s politics.

The Sharifs, the Zardaris and many of their close associates were portrayed as ultimate villains by the PTI’s top officials as sensational details of their alleged corruption were made public in the media. Some of these opposition politicians were arrested with fanfare as the PTI leadership boasted that for the first-time ever these super wealthy, powerful men were being brought to justice for their alleged white-collar crimes.

The initial target was to recover $200 billion within the first 100 days of the PTI’s rule as the Prime Minister and his cabinet members promised not to give the proverbial “NRO” to any of them.

However, to the dismay of many Pakistanis, the PTI’s promise of swift accountability did not materialize as almost all of these powerful politicians — who got indicted and even arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and other agencies — got off the hook due to lack of evidence, poor investigation and prosecution.

“It is not that the corruption cases against the accused were fake,” said a senior NAB official on the condition of anonymity. “The problem lies in our judicial system and many of its processes, which were exploited by the accused and their lawyers to their advantage.”

However, the detractors of the NAB say that the fault does not rest with the judiciary but with the poor and flawed cases presented by the investigators and the prosecution.

According to the information gathered by Bol News, laxity on part of the investigating officials and agencies in submitting challans in the court resulted in failed convictions against opposition leaders, including Shehbaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari, Syed Khurshid Shah, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Sharjeel Inam Memon, Ahsan Iqbal and Dr. Asim Hussain. Similarly, politicians belonging to the treasury benches found involved in sugar, flour, petrol, gas and medicines scams also managed to evade justice – from Jahangir Khan Tareen to some of Prime Minister’s cabinet members.

In a nutshell, the PTI’s accountability drive and narrative fell flat and lost its momentum as the ruling party’s popularity graph took a beating due to rising inflation and poor governance. The PTI’s critics were quick to say that the “Great Captain” failed to fulfill yet another of his promises. A hostile media and the propaganda unleashed by the opposition parties also made the accountability drive controversial.

Even Prime Minister Imran Khan had to admit that his much-hyped accountability drive failed to deliver results as in a sudden move he asked his accountability Czar, Barrister Shahzad Akbar, to resign. Akbar, once seen enjoying the prime minister’s absolute confidence, was hand-picked to lead the accountability drive following the conviction of former premier Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Scandal. However, one big fish after another got off the accountability net, exposing the inherent weaknesses of Pakistan’s investigation, prosecution and judicial system.

NAB’s fails to produce strong case against Khurshid Shah

The Supreme Court Judgment on January 24 in the corruption case against PPP’s senior leader Syed Khurshid Shah indicated how the accountability campaign failed to yield results.

Justice Manzoor Ali Shah in his decision stated that the NAB did not provide any concrete law to challenge the sale-deed value of Khurshid Shah’s assets and did not estimate the accused’s agricultural income as per law.

“There was no ground to admit the allegations against Khurshid Shah regarding banking transactions. Two years after Khurshid Shah’s arrest, the NAB could not file a final reference,” the court decision read.

Shah spent most of his jail time in the comforts of a hospital looked after by the Sindh government.

NAB yet to gather evidence against Zardari

Similarly, the NAB failed to gather concrete evidence against PPP’s Co-Chairman and former president Asif Ali Zardari to get him convicted. Zardari faces allegations of massive corruption, operating dubious bank accounts, and money laundering. On January 15, the accountability court granted permanent bail to Zardari due to health issues in the New York Property case. “This case against Mr. Zardari is still under investigation, but NAB has yet to gather evidence against him,” the accountability court said.

Sugar scam: No convictions

Almost two years after the sugar scandal hit the headlines under the PTI’s watch, not a single accused has been arrested so far even though the prime minister had formed a three-member commission on February 21, 2020 to investigate the sudden price hike of sugar in January 2020. “The sugar mills belonging to the families of the top brass and leading politicians of the country, including PTI’s disgruntled leader Jahangir Khan Tareen, PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif, PML-Q’s Moonis Elahi, PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari, (and cabinet member) Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiyar were among the beneficiaries of the sugar scam,” the commission claimed in its preliminary report revealed on April 5, 2020.

Similarly, the commission again in the forensic report issued on May 21, 2020 accused the sugar mill owners of minting illegal profits worth billions of rupees through unjust price hike, benami transactions, tax evasion, misuse of subsidy and purchasing sugarcane off the books.

At that time Shahzad Akbar had said that sugar mills belonging to Jahangir Tareen’s group were found guilty of “corporate fraud, double billing and over voicing.”

The mill was allegedly involved in forward sales, satta and benami sales, but there was no action taken against him or any of the other accused due to lack of solid evidence.

FIA took 14 months to submit challan against Shehbaz Sharif & sons

The FIA had been claiming since the last 14 months or so that they have concrete evidence against Shehbaz Sharif and his sons in the alleged Rs.25 billion corruption case.

A senior FIA official said that 14 low-grade employees of Sharif Group deposited Rs. 16 billion between 2008 to 2018 in 28 fake accounts.

But when asked why no one was convicted, she said that the challans were submitted late due to some technical hitches. “Of course, you know we have to be 100 percent sure before going for prosecution. However, I assure you that there will be convictions now as we have concrete evidence of money laundering against them,” she said.

Why no high-profile conviction?

A leading lawyer and an expert on white collar crimes, Dr Ikramul Haq said that all the investigating agencies are either incompetent or corrupt and, therefore, unable to pull off prosecution against the culprits.

“The answer lies in the resignation of Hussain Asghar, Deputy Chairman of NAB. He publicly said that the NAB intentionally made weak cases against Sharifs. The judges too failed to take the prosecutors to task for inordinate delay in filing challans,” he said. “The entire system is to be blamed as money and power can buy everyone and everything.”

Endorsing Ikram’s views, acclaimed political analyst Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi said that there were no convictions during the Imran Khan led PTI government because of weak prosecution and investigation.

“There are three stages — inquiry, investigation and prosecution — which are quite weak and outdated and they need to change and overhaul the whole accountability process.”

“The government released corruption stories to the media but failed to establish those allegations in the courts due to which no big fish or political leader was convicted except Nawaz Sharif,” Dr Rizvi said.

Even in the case of private individuals, mostly plea-bargains are made and these people get off the hook by submitting only a portion of the looted amount, he added.

Transparency International report

Agreeing with Dr Rizvi, Bilal I. Gillani, executive director of Gallup Pakistan, said that the accountability and anti-corruption drive under the PTI has actually been perceived as corrupt in itself.

The latest released Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International for 2021 as well as its previous reports is seen as a huge blow to the PTI government.

However, not just the government ministers but many analysts question the credibility of the Transparency International report, calling it flawed, biased and politically motivated – especially the input given by The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Pakistan ranking slid to 140 from 124 a year ago in the TI’s corruption index, but the government says that its yardstick was flawed as it took into account the so-called state capture and rule of law.

“Anti-corruption is a long-term struggle – perhaps for any political government to claim it would eradicate corruption within its own time was a mistake and in hindsight may have been an oversell by the PTI government,” Gillani said.

What needs to be done?

Dr Ikramul Haq said that the government should dismantle the existing alliance between robber barons and state functionaries, ensuring that nobody remains above the law. “Secondly, construct a single Regulatory Entity through special enactment with an independent board, resources, and operations.”

Dr Haq said that this entity [say Pakistan Financial Crime Monitoring Bureau (PFCMB)] should work as a watchdog for all financial crimes and passing incontrovertible evidence to a competent and independent National Prosecuting Agency (NPA) to take the offenders to task in special speedy trial courts where judges have expertise in laws relating to financial crimes to deliver swift judgments strictly under the Article 10A of the Constitution.

He maintained that the proposed structure of PFCMB should be as a multi-source financial intelligence and analysis network to detect, investigate, analyze and prosecute corruption by any citizen as per Article 5(2) of the Constitution.

For Dr Haq, it will accomplish the following objectives:

(a)   Implement financial crimes-related laws and regulations

(b)         Ensure reporting of high-end financial data/information for expert analysis and utilization to counter corruption and ML/CFT.

(c)          Provide training to the law enforcement officials and financial sector and prosecutors.

He maintained that as an autonomous body, PFCMB would be responsible for ensuring timely collection, preservation, examination, and transmission of information necessary to counter corruption and ensure the reporting regime by introducing legislative, operational, and technical changes in the existing laws. This centralized agency with skilled manpower alone can ensure uprooting corruption and meet the FATF mandate.

Will Imran Khan be able to take some of the opposition wickets on the corruption charges in his final spell? His close aides say that the will and desire is there, but the system seems to be working against him as it favours the corrupt more than those fighting corruption.