ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday declined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) request for suspending the orders of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) regarding the confidentiality of its foreign funding.

The orders came alongside the revelation that contrary to its submission before the ECP’s scrutiny committee, the party was aware of and operating at least two of the ‘unauthorised’ bank accounts that it had disowned through a March 15 submission to the commission.

On Tuesday, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani of the IHC observed that the court cannot issue an interim order without giving a proper hearing to the ECP and complainant Akbar S. Babar, a founding member of the PTI, now estranged from the party.

Documents show party operated at least two accounts previously ‘disowned’ before ECP committee

The ECP had earlier dismissed the party’s applications seeking to exclude Mr Babar from the foreign funding case. Party secretary Asad Umar also filed a petition asking that all records of the case, including the documents requisitioned through the State Bank of Pakistan, should not be shared with the petitioner.

When Justice Kayani took up the petition, PTI counsel Anwar Mansoor Khan argued that since the ECP has obtained the record related to foreign funding from the SBP and other sources it cannot be shared with a private citizen i.e. Mr Babar.

The court then issued notices to Mr Babar and the ECP.

Justice Kayani asked the PTI counsel whether any legal provision bars ECP from sharing the information with the complainant, and pointed out that ECP did not give undue weightage to Babar and the scrutiny committee prepared its report on the basis of record procured on its own.

Party ‘aware’ of disowned accounts

Documents seen by Dawn show that it did have knowledge of bank accounts that were “illegally opened and operated” by some of its leaders.

In its written reply submitted to the ECP on March 15, the PTI challenged the scrutiny committee’s finding that the party had concealed several accounts in its annual audited reports for the period 2009-13.

The PTI had disowned 11 of the accounts, saying that they were opened without its knowledge, and that when they learned of their existence, they took immediate steps to disassociate themselves from the accounts in question.

However, documentary evidence suggests that PTI’s Central Finance Board was involved in operating at least two of these accounts.

According to the documents, the Central Finance Board had adopted a resolution on Dec 2, 2012, deciding that the existing PTI account at the Peshawar Cantt branch of a private bank would be operated by new signatories.

Signed by then-PTI central finance secretary Sardar Azhar Tariq Khan, the decision was also communicated to the bank manager whereby the previous account signatories — Shah Farman, Asad Qaisar and Imran Shahzad — were replaced with new signatories.

The letter to the bank had been written by Saleemullah Jan, who had been listed on top of the list of the new signatories by the finance board, with explicit instructions that his signatures were necessary.

In another letter, also signed by Sardar Azhar, the decision of the PTI central finance board meeting was communicated to the chief manager of another private bank in Peshawar regarding a change in signatories of the account.

Dawn reached out to PTI cabinet ministers Shibli Faraz, Farrukh Habib as well as the party’s current Central Secretary (Finance) Siraj Ahmad to obtain the party’s version on the matter.

But until the filing of this report, none of them replied to requests for comment, with Shibli Faraz responding simply with: “I have no idea”.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2022