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LONDON—During
the stormy years Benazir Bhutto ruled
Pakistan,
her husband was a top power broker and a prime target of
corruption allegations that toppled her.
The
assassination of the former prime minister has pushed her
husband, Asif Ali Zardari, back into the heart of the
storm. Their political party last week named Zardari to
run its day-to-day affairs while appointing the couple’s
19-year-old son to the ceremonial role of chairman.
Even
though Zardari has said he will not run for parliament in
upcoming elections, attention has focused once again on
the corruption cases that have swirled around him at home
and abroad and made him a polarizing figure even within
the Pakistan People’s Party.
The
current political strife makes it especially difficult to
assess the allegations against Zardari in Pakistan. But
several cases in Europe offer insight into the long-time
suspicions that have haunted him and, to some extent, his
late wife. The cases raise questions about the sources of
the family’s wealth and the elaborate, secretive way in
which the couple allegedly moved money.
The
accusations center on Zardari, 51, a former polo player
whom critics nicknamed “Mr. 10 Percent” because of his
alleged taste for bribes. After Bhutto’s second government
fell in 1996, authorities imprisoned Zardari on graft
charges. Pakistan’s anticorruption agency pursued
investigations overseas, and several countries opened
their own inquiries.
Zardari
was released in 2004 and went into exile. His defenders
say Pakistani authorities framed him with fabricated
evidence and abused him while in custody, an experience
that inflicted lasting damage on his health.
Some of
Bhutto’s supporters have said the investigations were
politically driven attempts to destroy her. In October
President Pervez Musharraf approved an amnesty for Bhutto,
allowing her to return home and launch her ill-fated
campaign.
The most
significant European cases are a Swiss money-laundering
inquiry and a British civil case. They remain open, but
prospects were uncertain even before the assassination.
Lawyers for the couple had won court skirmishes and, in
interviews before Bhutto’s death, predicted that the
amnesty in Pakistan would cause the accusations to be
shelved. Spanish prosecutors recently closed a three-year
investigation of Bhutto, citing a lack of evidence.
But in
2003 a Swiss investigative magistrate decided he had the
goods on Zardari and Bhutto after pursuing a money trail
from offshore companies in the Caribbean to banks in
Geneva to a jewelry shop here.
Judge
Daniel Devaud took advantage of a Swiss law allowing
investigative magistrates to issue a summary verdict if
they think the evidence is strong, and he convicted
Zardari and Bhutto of money laundering. The judge ruled
that Swiss companies had bribed the couple in return for a
Pakistani government contract. He froze about $12 million
in suspected kickbacks.
But a
Swiss appeals court set aside the verdict. A new
magistrate reopened the investigation on charges of
aggravated money laundering, a more serious offense based
on the suspicion of systematic criminal activity.
Zardari’s
Swiss lawyer Saverio Lembo said his client, who served as
a legislator and environment minister for Bhutto, had done
nothing wrong.
In his
2003 verdict, the Swiss judge connected Zardari to a chain
of corruption that began with two Swiss companies, Cotecna
and SGS. Starting in 1994, company executives courted
Zardari in hopes of landing a contract to provide
container-inspection equipment and expertise to the
Pakistani customs agency, according to Swiss court
records.
A Swiss
adviser of the Bhutto family, lawyer Jens Schlegelmilch,
acted as an intermediary for executives who, according to
internal SGS memos, saw Zardari as Pakistan’s unofficial
“deputy prime minister.” After talks with Zardari, the two
companies won the contract in 1995 “upon the decision of
Benazir Bhutto” and “despite the opposition of the customs
service,” the judge found.
As part of
a secret deal, the judge found, the Swiss contractors
funneled $11.9 million in bribes into three offshore
companies in the British Virgin Islands and ultimately
into bank accounts in Geneva. The nominal owners of two
companies were Bhutto’s mother and brother-in-law,
according to the records.
The judge
found that Zardari owned the third company, Bomer Finance,
which received about $8 million, and that “Bhutto shares
with her husband the assets” and “has power of
disposition” over the company, according to the documents.
Bhutto
denied in testimony that she had anything to do with Bomer,
according to her lawyer in
Geneva, Alec Reymond.
Nonetheless, Devaud portrayed the former prime minister as
a knowing participant. He wrote in his verdict: “Bhutto
thus knew that she was acting in a criminally
reprehensible manner by abusing her role in order to
obtain for herself or her husband considerable sums...at
the cost of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”
In
addition to rejecting the allegation of Bhutto’s
involvement, Reymond said the judge erred in depicting
payments as bribes.
“The money
is there; commissions were paid,” Reymond said. “I do not
think Mr. Zardari disputes that. But they were like the
commissions that are paid to hundreds of businessmen.
There was nothing irregular or illegal about them.”
The judge
gave Zardari, Bhutto and Schlegelmilch suspended six-month
sentences, but the appellate court set them aside. In the
new inquiry, another investigate magistrate submitted his
conclusions in October to the prosecutor general of
Geneva, who must decide whether to pursue a trial.
In Britain
the decade-old civil proceedings focus on Zardari. In a
lawsuit, the Pakistani government accused him of using
illicit funds to acquire the 365-acre Rockwood estate, a
$6.5-million property featuring a Tudor-style mansion and
two adjoining farms in the Surrey district. The estate was
bought and refurbished in 1995 through trusts in the Isle
of Man and Liechtenstein and the Caribbean companies
linked to Bhutto, Zardari and the alleged kickbacks,
according to the lawsuit.
Zardari
denied ownership until January 2006, when he acknowledged
he owned the property, according to British court records.
A month later, a court on the Isle of Man concluded that
it did not find evidence that proceeds of corruption were
used to buy and refurbish the estate, according to the
records.
British
lawyers representing the Pakistani government then filed a
lawsuit in the High Court in
London seeking the proceeds of the sale of the estate. Zardari
challenged the jurisdiction of the court, which rejected
his motion in October 2006.
In his
ruling, Judge Lawrence Collins emphasized that he was not
making legal findings about the facts but instead issuing
a preliminary assessment of the case. He said that “there
was no direct evidence” the estate was bought with illicit
funds, according to the records.
On the
other hand, the judge did rule that Pakistan has a
“reasonable prospect” of proving that funds used to
refurbish the estate were “the fruits of corruption,”
according to the documents.
The
allegations of corruption have yet to be proved in court.
A civil trial had been expected to take place in London
sometime this year. But the assassination has left that
possibility, like so much about the future of Pakistan and
the Bhutto clan, in limbo. |
