Failed accountability

If the state of accountability remains as it is today, then Prime Minister Imran Khan can easily wash his hands off victory in the next elections. Like most other things, PTI was not prepared to deal with the accountability of corrupt rulers, the same lot it persistently blamed for Pakistan’s economic morass. Their manifesto pivoted around the nabbing the corrupt, suggesting as if a PTI election victory would enable it to exert control over NAB, the trial courts, the FIA (key gatekeepers at the airports) and the all-powerful media.

Zulfi Bokhari was right in pointing out that the PM was being wrongly briefed about Shahzad Akbar’s work. I am sure Imran Khan never actually saw him once in PTI before forming the government. Was Akbar a special kind of political paratrooper?

All barristers are not equal. Every student who passes the Bar exam from one of the four Inns – Lincoln’s Inn, Temple Inn, Gray’s Inn and Middle Temple -is “Called to the Bar” (with a capital ‘C). However, those who are overseas students take the next available flight out of Britain to practice in their own countries, under the oversight of their lawyers’ regulatory bodies. Those like me, who reside in the UK and have no restrictions on practising in the UK, have to go through different rules.

Firstly, during our final year we are supposed to do practical exercises at barristers’ chambers and have to go through mock trials. During my days as a student, if someone couldn’t deliver a proper speech before the mock court, he or she was sent to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama for perfecting their stresses and pauses, and above all, ensuring clear and audible speech. Then, post-Call, one would have to do one year’s pupillage at one of the chambers of barristers. Only those who completed their pupillage could call themselves barristers and no one else.

Shahzad Akbar wouldn’t be able to call himself a barrister if he were living in London – but he’s not alone. All the old and new barristers in Pakistan have no right of audience in any English or Welsh court. The jadoogar lawyer Sharifuddin Peerzada was a plain advocate, but always desired to be a barrister. In the end, he once proudly showed me an honorary Bar degree that he obtained by sending his very impressive CV to one of the Inns of Court. It specifically read that the holder couldn’t practice in England, and hence wouldn’t be able to call himself a barrister. In keeping with propriety, the old man never did.

What does all that mean in terms of poor Shahzad Akbar’s ouster from his mighty office? Traditionally, most plunderers of innocent people’s money end up in London, so any attempt to get the culprits or the wealth out of the UK requires knowledge of the laws and rules of England and Wales, as routinely practiced by barristers and solicitors in the UK. Shahzad Akbar’s role in the cabinet was not exactly to get the plunderers and criminals back. He was supposed to be merely displaying signs that he was doing such a thing.

Akbar’s main feat was Malik Riaz’s case of repatriation of funds to Pakistan. It wasn’t an accountability exercise, but a facilitation of satisfying the Supreme Court’s fine in the Bahria Town Karachi case. The money in UK bank account was not backed up by a sound trail and the National Crime Agency in London chose not to prosecute Malik Riaz and purportedly repatriate the confiscated amount back to Pakistan.

Malik Riaz’s backers in Pakistan facilitated this transaction, whilst the cabinet remained ignorant. If that’s where Shahzad Akbar came from then he was working quite satisfactorily. Zulfi Bokhari may know the details of his accountability drive, but it’s both true and public knowledge that there are considerable impediments in the success of accountability.

There are moles and agents in the corridors of power. One marvels at the appointment of Shahzad’s successor, a non-lawyer with no clue of English law, yet tasked to wade through mutual legal assistance, extradition complexities and being the central point of contact to communicate with foreign authorities. It’s a non-starter in Brigadier Abbasi’s case. Senior army officers, by way of routine, were posted as DGs of NAB and Abbasi is no different. A truly unmerited appointment after removing a law-knowing advisor. It’s a bit like a footballer being sent out to lead a cricket test match.

One had to have the English legal regime in view to deal with not only Nawaz Sharif, but all the culprits named in the Panama and Pandora leaks. Nawaz Sharif’s appeal against his conviction was easily dismissed by the Islamabad High Court because the appellant, instead of pleading for his case, absconded and didn’t respond when summoned by the court. The appeal to the Supreme Court against this dismissal has since become time-barred which, in layman’s language, means that Sharif’s goose has been cooked. His position in the Avenfield House flats case has reached its conclusion. The High Court leaving a window for him to enter through when back in Pakistan neither pauses nor stays the operation of law indefinitely, and his sentence has acquired finality.

Under the English jurisdiction, once a case of a person’s acquisition of property in England through unexplained sources attains finality in a foreign country, the process of confiscation of the subject properties can commence. The new asset recovery boss is likely to be an extremely competent law enforcer, but it will take a Herculean effort to actually bring back the money collected after the Avenfield House auction by the British authorities, bring the corruption cases investigations to fruition, and secure prompt trials and the disposal of appeals within the Pakistani system.

Ultimately, it is interesting to observe that the Prime Minister’s potential victory in the next general election has been unwarily linked to Brigadier Abbasi being successful in his new accountability task.

Well, he has just 16 months to pull it off.

The writer is a former Senator and practices law in London and in Pakistan