Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shaukat Tarin has said that he can’t believe the quotes about him being attributed to former army head, General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Clarifying his position, Tarin said that he had only asked the then-Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt General (retd) Faiz Hameed to have his cases heard on merit by the courts.
Tarin was reacting to the accounts attributed to General Bajwa in a column written by Javed Chaudhry.
In the piece, Javed Chaudhary quoted Gen (retd) Bajwa as saying, “We kept trying to convince the prime minister [Imran Khan] against appointing Tarin as finance minister. I told the PM that Tarin, who failed to run his bank, will ruin the economy. The premier disagreed.”
“National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had a Rs 8 billion case against Tarin. The PM asked us to have these cases dismissed…. and Gen Faiz Hameed got these cases scrapped from NAB,” the column cited Gen (retd) Bajwa as stating.
In response to these assertions, Tarin said he could not “believe” that the former Chief could say such things about him.
“On March 31, 2022, General sahib had declared me a hero when I finalised the Reko Diq deal,” he said.
While sharing details about his cases, the former finance minister stated: “My case should have been disposed of on merit. Faiz never told me that he would get my case dismissed, nor did I ever ask him for any favour. I had also told the prime minister [Imran Khan] that I would not accept this job [finance ministry] unless my cases are finished.”
“The columnist wrote that the former army chief had my NAB cases dismissed through [Lt Gen (retd)] Faiz Hameed. The former army chief’s comments are against the truth and ridiculous.”
