Anjum Niaz

It’s premature to declare the champions in the fight against corruption. Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have teamed up to face their formidable opponents, the intelligence agencies and the judiciary. Who will carry the Grand Slam that we don’t know.

Notice the timing of Wajid Shamsul Hasan swiping valuable documents from Switzerland and the sudden re-appearance of Shahid Aziz, the man fired in July of 2007 by Musharraf from chairmanship of National Accountability Bureau (NAB). He was sacked because he had the dope on some including Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Humayum Akhtar. Now you understand why the Sharif brothers have opted to partner Zardari in his battle against the establishment.

While our amateur Houdini High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan escaped with 12 cartons containing details of the Swiss case against the first couple, the ‘master’ Houdini Shahid Aziz kept clones of those 12 cartons, hopefully lying safe somewhere in the custody of our intelligence agencies in Islamabad. In other words, copies of those Swiss court documents must have been photocopied and brought back from Geneva to Islamabad by Hassan Waseem Afzal, Shahid Aziz’s deputy. Musharraf pulled out Afzal just when he had the cats (AZ &MNS) in the bag. By the way Harry Houdini was an American magician whose specialty was escapes. He could slip out of ropes, chains and handcuffs while locked in trunks and milk cans or submerged underwater.

The current NAB Chairman Navid Ahsan knows that the proof against Zardari and Nawaz Sharif is secure. But he will never unfold the leaves of graft because he has already once sold his soul to the devil (Musharraf). He fears he may get fired by the present president were he to expose him.

A lot of water has flown under the bridge since the exit of NAB supremos Aziz and Afzal. Musharraf is gone, Zardari has returned and Nawaz Sharif is president-in- waiting and more recently AZ’s partner in fighting corruption charges. They appear very comfortable in their skins.

Remember the flirtation between Musharraf and Benazir bungeed by international babble-athons conducted in Dubai, London and Washington in the summer of 2007? She asked the General to wind up the ‘wicked old corruption cell’ at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and get rid of the ‘big bad wolf’ wanting to eat up little Red Riding Hood. The big bad wolf a.k.a known as Hassan Waseem Afzal was thus shunted off to weave deadly plots against the first couple and the Sharif brothers with his new boss Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi.

Afzal had doggedly busted the international network and cracked the code that contained details of the alleged wealth of the first couple. It had cost the taxpayer millions of dollars to follow the money trail. As we well know, after President Farooq Leghari sacked Benazir in 1996 on corruption charges, her successor Nawaz Sharif gave the Ehtesab Bureau a one-point agenda: to nail the couple. And the man tasked to scale the Himalayan heights and track down the couple was handsome Hassan Waseem Afzal. When Nawaz Sharif got the boot from General Musharraf, Ehtesab Bureau got a new name (NAB) but continued with the services of Afzal, now handed a two-point agenda: go get Benazir as well as Nawaz Sharif!

While Gen (r) Shahid Aziz is the oracle who has appeared like a bolt out of the blue, Hassan Waseen Afzal, probably an officer on special duty (OSD), is just a phone call away and can zing back into his old act should the powers that be desire.

It was in the spring of 2006, when vice chairman of NAB, Hassan Waseem Afzal held a press conference in Islamabad and gave out copies of NAB’s investigations nailing Benazir Bhutto. According to him, Petroline FZC (Free Zone Corporation) was registered in Sharjah, UAE on December 10, 2000. “Its owners were /are Benazir Bhutto with 34 per cent shares, Hassan Ali Jafferi 33 per cent and Rehman Malik 33 per cent shares. HAJ (Hassan Ali Jafferi) is the nephew of BB and RM (Rehman Malik) is a fugitive from justice,” Afzal announced to the national media which splashed it as headline news.

Then came another zinger from Afzal: “NAB unearths BB’s illicit connection with UN-controlled oil for food programme and her connections with Saddam regime in Iraq.” The first paragraph in the damning document ended with the sentence “Corruption, manipulation, kickbacks and commissions appear to be common between the former prime minister of Pakistan and the oil for food program.”

Citing the Oct 27, 2005 report of the ‘Independent Inquiry Committee appointed by the UN’ the NAB alleged “Petroline FZC, an offshore company of the former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto paid $ two million as kickbacks to the defunct Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain in violation of UN sanctions and violating all norms of international law.” Its findings are based on the 623 pages of the UN report in which Petroline FZC paid kickbacks to an Italian MP called Paolo Folloni; a Frenchman named Michel Grimard, a Lebanese national named To’ma; Romanian Labour Party and Yugoslavian Left wing Party. “In total Petrozine FZC purchased Iraqi oil worth $150million. The surcharge paid to Iraqi regime amounts to $ two million, which was paid into the bank of Jordan. Petroline FZC was financed by an American oil trading company called Bayoil, which is facing prosecution in the US for its dealing in the oil-for-food- programme.”

Afzal’s boast to the reporters was that Benazir Bhutto, Rehman Malik and Hassan Ali Jaffery would soon be charged and sentenced. “The Pakistan government will prosecute these three Pakistanis under UN guidelines” he told the press.

At this famous press conference, Afzal bared a second company called Tempo Global Gains FZC owned by Bhutto and her three children. “This company appears to be the ultimate destination of all money siphoned off by Benazir and her aides,” he said, adding that NAB would ask the UAE government to freeze these companies’ accounts.

Afzal succeeded in convincing the Spanish judicial authorities in the state of Valencia, Spain to freeze bank accounts belonging to the two offshore companies, Petroline and Tempo Global Gains FZC that were operating in Spain. They also confiscated the Bhutto villa in Valencia.

NAB’s clumsy website that had once proudly posted proof of Benazir’s corruption became a wet rag after Aziz and Afzal were sent packing. In a press clipping dated May 31, 2007, it defended the withdrawing of corruption cases against the first couple by saying that it had run out of money to pursue the Spanish case: “Since the case is primarily a Spanish prosecution, therefore NAB could be allowed to quit as Civil Party as GOP Exchequer is not going to benefit from the outcome of the case, and further NAB shall be available for any help for the Spanish Prosecution in future, which could be attained on a simple request of International Mutual Legal Assistance.”

“NAB’s wantonness,” I wrote in a column just before Benazir returned to Pakistan, “fits perfectly the description of a hooker: with a sly wink; long gaze; flip of the hair, lip purse, furrowed brow and finger tap, the lady is a tramp! With its moral compass directed towards the Army House, NAB today has lost all its credibility.”

Will the embryo called ‘Accountability’ being crosshatched by Zardari and the Sharifs live or perish? The News
The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting.Email: aniaz@fas.harvard. edu & www. anjumniaz.com