The recent arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan has been making headlines. In Al Qadir Trust case, Imran was taken into custody outside the Islamabad High Court on Tuesday while attending two cases.
The arrest was in relation to the Al Qadir Trust case, which accuses Imran and his wife of obtaining billions of rupees and hundreds of kanals of land from a real estate firm in exchange for legalizing Rs50 billion.
The money was identified and returned to Pakistan by the United Kingdom during Imran’s previous government.
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Origins of the Al Qadir Trust Case
The National Crime Agency (NCA) of the United Kingdom had settled a case worth £190 million with the family of property tycoon Malik Riaz five years ago. As part of the settlement, the NCA received a UK property worth approximately £50 million and all of the funds landed in the frozen accounts of Malik Riaz.
The NCA’s investigation into Riaz’s assets and property in the UK surfaced in December 2018, shortly after the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) came to power.
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In August 2019, the NCA announced that it had frozen eight bank accounts containing more than £100 million, suspected to have derived from bribery and corruption in an overseas nation. Approximately £20m held by a linked individual was frozen following a hearing in December 2018.
Earlier that year, Riaz’s real estate firm, Bahria Town Ltd, was found guilty of illegally acquiring thousands of acres of land on Karachi’s outskirts in district Malir. The Supreme Court of Pakistan accepted Riaz’s offer of Rs460bn as settlement dues.
The recovered amount, however, went to the Supreme Court’s accounts instead of the Government of Pakistan’s account. The Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Accountability, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, had claimed that the money would directly come to the state.
However, when questioned about the origin of the money and how it had come to be stashed away abroad, SAPM Akbar cited confidentiality clauses between the parties involved in the case, including the UK.
Al Qadir Trust Case against Imran Khan
The Al Qadir Trust case resurfaced in June 2022 after an alleged audio leak of a telephone conversation between Malik Riaz and his daughter. In the conversation, the two talked about the supposed demands of Farah Khan, a friend of Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi, against some alleged favors from the previous government. Riaz denied his role in any political matters and claimed that the leaked audio clip was fabricated.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah later accused Imran and his wife of accepting Rs5bn and hundreds of kanals of land for protecting the real estate firm in a money laundering case. Sanaullah said Bahria Town had illegally transferred Rs50bn to a Pakistani national in the UK, identified by the UK’s National Crime Agency.
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Imran, the prime minister at the time, had tasked Shehzad Akbar, ex-PM’s aide on accountability, to resolve the matter. Akbar “settled” the entire case, while the Rs50bn, which was state property and belonged to the national treasury, was adjusted against Bahria Town’s liability, the interior minister alleged.
The federal cabinet formed a committee to probe into Imran and his wife Bushra’s alleged involvement in the case. According to Sanaullah, Bahria Town had donated hundreds of acres of land to Al-Qadir Trust, with the agreement bearing signatures of certain individuals, including Imran and his wife.