Pakistan anti-corruption body arrests ex-foreign minister for alleged graft

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (

NAB

), arrested former foreign minister and senior Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Khawaja Muhammad Asif from

Islamabad

on Tuesday night. The anti-graft body claimed he had accumulated assets beyond his known sources of income.

In a statement issued after the arrest, the NAB said Asif had allegedly concealed the “nature, means and transfer of assets”.

According to the statement, Asif became a senator in 1991, was elected to parliament several times, and had also served as a federal minister. It said that the worth of his assets before assuming public office was Rs 5.1 million and had increased to Rs 221 million in 2018. This, it said, did not match his known sources of income.

Following his arrest, ex-PM Nawaz Sharif termed Asif’s arrest “a drama the likes of which he had never seen in his life”. He told reporters in London that the government was misguided if it believed that such tactics would weaken the Pakistan Democratic Movement, an anti-government alliance of opposition parties.

In a subsequent posting on Twitter, he termed the arrest a result of the “nexus between the selectors (army) and the selected (PM Imran Khan and his government)”, and claimed that it reflected the growing state of panic within the government.

Sharif’s daughter, PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz, also slammed the arrest at a press conference. She alleged that NAB often arrested people in such cases when it did not have any concrete evidence. “You make use of vague charges to arrest someone,” she said.

She also alleged that Asif had told her a few days ago that “two persons” had visited him and told him to abandon Nawaz Sharif and all the cases against him would go away. “On his refusal, the persons told Khawaja Asif that he would have to face the consequences. And now this has happened,” she added.

On Wednesday morning, an accountability court in Islamabad approved two-day remand for Asif and ordered the NAB to immediately present him before the relevant court in Lahore.