Election Commission of Pakistan reserves ruling on PM Imran Khan’s party funding case

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday reserved a verdict related to four applications of the ruling party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) seeking secrecy in the scrutiny of its foreign funding case.
In 2014, a dissident founding member of PTI, Akbar S Babar, had filed a case before the ECP, alleging that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected and sent through illegal ‘hundi’ channels from the Middle East to accounts of the PTI employees.The funds, according to the petitioner, were collected through two offshore companies, registered under Prime Minister Imran Khan’s name. In the petition, Babar also claimed that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
For over a year, the proceedings of the case were delayed as the PTI had filed a writ petition in October 2015 in the Islamabad High Court seeking to restrain the ECP scrutiny of its accounts.
In February 2017, the IHC sent back the case to the ECP for a fresh review of its jurisdiction and in March 2018, a scrutiny committee was formed to look into the PTI’s foreign funding accounts.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the Chief Election Commissioner Sardar Mohammad Raza, a retired Supreme Court judge, said that the PTI had submitted four new miscellaneous applications to the committee. “They just want to increase the burden of work,” Raza remarked. He said that the investigative committee had forwarded the applications to him so that he could take a decision.
Following the conclusion of proceedings, the ECP bench reserved its judgment, which will be announced on October 10.