PTI govt excludes ‘most corrupt govt of last 19 years’ from its investigation: report

The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has excluded from its probe the country’s “most corrupt government of the past 19 years” as it investigates foreign loans obtained by previous governments, The News reported.

As per the details, the Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan-led government has formed a high-powered commission to probe Rs24,000 billion loans acquired during the past 10 years.

While the PTI is only focusing on the last 10 years of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) governments, last 19 annual reports of Transparency International (TI) — a Berlin-based global watchdog — show that corruption was at its peak in Pakistan during General (r) Pervez Musharraf’s military rule.

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According to The News, TI, which publishes annual Global Corruption Barometer and Corruption Perception Index (CPI) to give a comparative listing of corruption worldwide, shows more corruption in Musharraf’s tenure as compared to the latest of the two former ruling parties.

The least corruption in terms of the best CPI score was attained by Pakistan in 2018, the year which was shared by the rule of the outgoing PML-N, caretaker setup and the PTI.

Although the last tenure of the PPP was generally dubbed the most corrupt in the country’s history, the TI annual reports record shows that the lowest score during the last PPP regime has been 24 out of 100 (2.4/10) in 2009 as against 21 under Musharraf.

It means that the last PPP tenure’s lowest score is three points better than Musharraf’s lowest score.

HIGH-POWERED COMMISSION:

The ruling PTI recently formed a high-powered commission, headed by National Accountancy Bureau (NAB) Deputy Chairman Hussain Asghar, to probe the soaring loans piled up over the past 10 years.

The 12-member commission includes officials from NAB, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Intelligence Bureau (IB), Military Intelligence (MI), Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

According to a government notification, the federal government would hire national and international experts to conduct forensic audits of investment and expenditure of the past governments during the last 10 years.

The commission will have to submit interim reports of progress every month and a final report within six months.

It would also probe all development projects, kickbacks and contracts during 2008-2018. Embezzlement of government funds and alleged corruption in the development projects would also be investigated.

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