ISLAMABAD: A meeting of the Election Commission of Pakistan’s scrutiny committee tasked with conducting a fresh audit of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) accounts will be held here on Jan 13, informed sources told Dawn.

The decision came a day after the ECP showed concerns over delay in the process and directed the scrutiny committee to meet thrice a week.

The last meeting of the panel took place on Dec 24 after a gap of over two months, but the DG Law of the ECP, who heads the committee, had held the counsel representing the parties responsible for the snail-paced progress.

The committee was formed in March 2018 to complete the audit of the PTI accounts within a month.

Committee’s Aug 13 report has been rejected for being neither complete nor well-detailed

Later, its term was extended. On June 2 last year, the ECP gave a final deadline of Aug 17 to the committee for submission of its report.

Subsequently, the committee concluded the scrutiny on Aug 13 and submitted a report to the commission, which was rejected for being “neither complete nor well-detailed”.

“The scrutiny committee, on the basis of the documents provided by both parties and collected from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), has neither scrutinised the record nor evaluated evidence from the documents and it has also failed to form a definite opinion,” the ECP noted in its order passed on Aug 27.

While reprimanding the panel, the ECP observed that it was the duty and responsibility of the committee to scrutinise the authenticity, reliability and credibility of each and every document submitted to it by both parties. It said the committee had the authority to approach proper forums, sources and persons to confirm the authenticity or otherwise of the documents.

“Admittedly, the law provides criteria of authenticity and credibility for scrutiny of the documents, but the committee has not adopted proper procedure in this respect,” the ECP observed.

In its order on the scrutiny committee’s report, the commission noted that no definite conclusion had been drawn in it.

The ECP stated: “It is painful to say that directions were not followed in strict sense despite lapse of more than 28/29 months.”

It ordered the committee to conduct the scrutiny afresh and complete the task as soon as possible, but not later than six weeks.

But yet another deadline set by the ECP was missed by the committee and little progress has been made after that.

A founding member of the PTI, Akbar S. Babar, had filed the case on Nov 14, 2014, after he developed differences with the PTI chief over alleged internal corruption and abuse of laws governing the party’s political funding.

The petitioner alleged that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected through two offshore companies, registered under the prime minister’s signature, and that money was sent through illegal ‘hundi’ channels from the Middle East to accounts of PTI employees.

He also alleged that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.

When asked to comment on the scrutiny panel’s stance of blaming the lawyers for the delay, the petitioner and Mr Babar termed it a misplaced attempt to divert attention from real issues holding investigation of the PTI’s foreign funding.

He said to club PTI’s delaying tactics already certified by the ECP with the petitioner’s legal team is misleading and simply not true. He said he has not missed a single hearing of the committee and his legal counsel, Syed Ahmad Hassan Shah and Badar Iqbal Chaudhery, have rarely missed either.

Mr Babar said the ECP in its Oct 10, 2019 order has already blamed the PTI of historic abuse of law to delay proceedings one way or another. The question remains; why was the accused allowed to delay proceedings?

He said it is a matter of record that the PTI has sought 24 written or oral adjournments of the committee proceedings on various pretexts. It has filed no less than four applications objecting to, among others, the presence of complainant in the scrutiny proceedings, seeking secrecy and confidentiality of the proceedings.

So the reason for the delay despite over 80 meetings of the committee is simple; when those who are under investigation influence the investigation process, how can there be progress?

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2021