Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has urged Imran Khan to file a defamation case against the British newspaper Financial Times for publishing a damning report that alleges how funds collected through charity cricket matches were used for the rise of the ousted premier’s political party.
The Financial Times on Thursday published the story titled The strange case of the cricket match that helped fund Khan’s political rise’. The report says that fees were paid to Wootton Cricket Ltd, which, despite the name, was in fact a Cayman Islands-incorporated company owned by Pakistani tycoon Arif Naqvi, the founder of Dubai-based Abraaj Group.
The report says Wootton Cricket Ltd was used to bankroll the cricketer-turned-politician’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party after receiving funds from companies and individuals including at least 2 million pounds in April 2013 from an influential Arab figure.
Responding to the report, Prime Minister Shehbaz said in a tweet: I urge Imran Khan to file a defamation case against Financial Times for publishing an indicting article. If he doesn’t & I am sure he wouldn’t, it will prove one more time how brazenly he is lying & cheating the people of Pakistan.
Could it get more damning? The charade of self-proclaimed honesty & righteousness has been busted by the Financial Times story that details the flow of foreign funding into PTI bank accounts. Imran Niazi is a bunch of massive contradictions, lies & hypocrisy, he said.
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb said the PTI chief Khan and the foreign funding received by his party were the biggest threat to Pakistan.
She said Khan received funding from the United States and he has no right to talk about national security, the state-run Radio Pakistan reported.
Aurangzeb said instead of discussing the economy, Khan should answer as to why he used the donations for running his party affairs.
Khan, 69, has said he is waiting for the verdict of the election commission’s investigation.
It will not be appropriate to prejudge PTI, he said.
In its January report, the election commission said Wootton Cricket had transferred USD 2.12mn to the PTI but did not reveal the original source of the money.
The impact of the scandal could yet hit Khan’s re-election ambitions. In July he renewed his call for an early poll after the PTI won a critical victory in by-elections in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. On Twitter, he called the Election Commission of Pakistan totally biased, the report said.
At the same time, Prime Minister Shehbaz has urged the commission to publish its verdict in the PTI case, saying that the delays caused by political infighting had given Khan a free pass despite his repeated & shameless attacks on state institutions .
Khan was ousted from power in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he alleged was part of a U.S.-led conspiracy targeting him because of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China and Afghanistan.
Khan, who came to power in 2018, reportedly with the backing of the military, is the only Pakistani Prime Minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament. He was replaced by PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Neha Khan | 
