ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), during hearing of the foreign funding case, said on Wednesday that party did not have its own account abroad. A three-member bench of the ECP headed by CEC Sikandar Sultan Raja, Shah Muhammad Jatoi and Nisar Ahmed Durrani heard the case. The PTI financial expert said that all overseas donors deposited funds to the party through agent funds. Sindh member of the commission Nisar Durrani inquired the PTI financial advisor that the names of the donors were looking strange. Meanwhile financial expert Najam Shah said that the language and accent of many Pakistanis changes when they go abroad. The commission asked why the identity card numbers of those whose names were mentioned were not written, to which the PTI lawyer Anwar Mansoor Khan replied that the ECP had made the identity cards and mobile numbers of donors mandatory in 2018. The PTI lawyer Anwar Mansoor said that registration of names confirms that necessary details of donors were kept from the very beginning. The PTI financial expert acknowledged that bank statements of PTI international accounts were not shared as those were not needed despite the fact that the scrutiny committee in its order sheet dated April 25, 2018 and several subsequent orders had demanded that PTI submit all its international accounts including the six it had acknowledged before the Scrutiny Committee. However, the PTI Counsel Anwar Mansoor Khan interjected that PTI maintains no international bank accounts. As directed by the CEC to conclude his arguments, the PTI financial expert concluded his arguments to which the PTI counsel Anwar Mansoor Khan requested two more days to summarize his legal arguments one more time. Talking to media outside the ECP, the petitioner and PTI founding member Akbar S Babar said that since 2014 he had been demanding a thorough probe into the PTI accounts and those of its four employees authorised to collect donations. Akbar S Babar said when a party is illegally funded and hoisted to power, there is an agenda attached to it. Babar said the agenda of political and economic hit men is to create political chaos and cripple the economy to dictate international terms. He said, “We have reached the end point of the international conspiracy.” Babar predicted revelations regarding major foreign funding of PTI and the direct involvement of the PTI top leadership. He further said the PTI demand to club all funding cases was a useless attempt to dump the foreign funding case for years.

Party’s lawyer says all overseas donors deposited funds to party through agent funds

He said if other parties also take the route PTI took to delay the case for eight years, clubbing all cases together would mean burying the foreign funding case for good.

This would be a great injustice to the people of Pakistan who want to know the truth. He said such a demand implies that all corruption cases before NAB should also be clubbed together as well as all criminal cases.

Babar hoped that there would be no more hurdles before the ECP, on one technicality or another, to conclude arguments next week and reserve judgment accordingly.

Later on, the case hearing adjourned till June 14.