ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission (ECP) scrutiny committee constituted in March 2018 to look into PTI’s accounts has once again refused to share the party’s financial records with Akbar S. Babar, the petitioner in the PTI foreign funding case, prompting him to file a written statement questioning the credibility of the scrutiny process.

The committee has referred Mr Babar’s statement to the ECP, as well as matter of its own refusal to share the party’s documents with him.

In the statement, Mr Babar said that the process, which has lasted two years and remains inconclusive, must be the “longest financial scrutiny ever of any entity for reasons best left to posterity.”

He added: “Without addressing the concerns, the scrutiny of PTI foreign funding would remain devoid of credibility and fall far short of meeting the minimum standards of transparency and accuracy.”

On Thursday, Mr Babar’s lawyer Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah challenged the committee’s decision not to share PTI’s financial records, saying this was against the ECP verdicts on record as well as the norms of transparency.

Committee constituted by ECP to look into party’s accounts has once again refused to share the records

Challenging the transparency of the scrutiny process, Mr Babar claimed in his statement that “without sharing the complete financial records of PTI, the petitioner is at a loss to assist the committee in any meaningful to reach credible conclusions.”

He also alleged that an auditor was replaced under pressure from the PTI ostensibly to influence the scrutiny process, stating that in January 2019 the PTI “made serious allegations against one of the two auditors of the scrutiny committee, namely Mr Mohammad Faheem” who was subsequently replaced.

He listed the failings of the committee to conduct a transparent forensic investigation of the PTI’s accounts as mandated by the ECP, citing specific instances where the committee failed to investigate “all the leads/evidence shared with it”.

Mr Babar also claimed that the committee did not try to establish the veracity or otherwise of the PTI special audit report that was so vital to the complaint, or “to seek details independently or from PTI of two PTI Lloyds bank accounts maintained by PTI in Britain and admitted by PTI finance secretary on national television.”

He alleged that the committee did not try “to seek details of PTI bank accounts maintained abroad despite evidence of such accounts in the US, Britain, Denmark, Australia and several other countries.”

Similarly, despite evidence presented before it, he said the committee did not try “to seek details of PTI fund raising in the Middle East or verify evidence of such fund raising submitted by the petitioner.”

He alleged that the committee refuses “to investigate/probe money received in private bank accounts of PTI employees despite sample documentary evidence available before it.”

Mr Babar filed the foreign funding case with the ECP in November 2014. He has since contested at least seven PTI writ petitions and around a dozen applications before the commission to delay, scuttle or freeze the scrutiny process under one pretext or another, his statement said.

He said that he could not endorse “an eye-wash of an exercise” whereby a “founding member of the party entitled by law to have access to full accounts of the party” was denied lawful access.

The ECP is expected to meet next week on March 10 to hear an application by the petition regarding threats to his life as well as the scrutiny process.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2020