The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has blamed its agents managing its two limited liability companies (LLCs), saying the responsibility lies with the agents in case of any illegal funding from the United States.
The Election Commission of Pakistan had started fresh scrutiny of the PTI accounts — a process going on since March 2018. The foreign funding against the ruling party case was filed by its founding member Akbar S Babar in 2014.
In a response to the petition in the foreign funding case, the PTI, that had denied any links to the foreign funding, said that if the two LLC registered after the written instructions of party chief Imran Khan were involved in the illegal act, it would be due to its agents who were managing them in the US.
The PTI said in its reply submitted to the ECP said that “any contribution that has been collected by the agent which may be questionable would be beyond the scope of the work/responsibility/instructions given by the principal (respondent)”. Therefore, the “principal will not be liable under Section 228 and not admit/certify such content”.
Dawn reported that the ECP committee also refused to hand over the PTI’s financial documents to the petitioner’s lawyer due to the concerns expressed by the PTI.
“The documents include 23 PTI bank statements received on instructions from the State Bank that were mostly concealed from the ECP,” it reported. However, the counsel of Akbar S Babar will be allowed to inspect the documents during the next hearing.
The petitioner’s counsel Ahmad Hassan Shah said the refusal to share the documents was in contrast to the ECP order of May 2018.
In a decision, the ECP had killed the PTI’s request to keep these documents and the scrutiny process secret.
The body’s chairman acknowledged that the PTI’s bank statements and other documents were not being shared with the petitioner on the concerns of PTI.
At this, the petitioner questioned the transparency of the inquiry, saying how could there be an independent probe if the proceedings were steered by the accused party.
