Former Pakistani Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan was arrested on Tuesday from outside the Islamabad High Court (IHC) premises.
The cricketer-turned politician was present in the court in connection with the hearings of two cases. After the arrest, Islamabad Police released a statement quoting Inspector General (IG) Akbar Nasir Khan as saying that Imran had been arrested in relation to the Al Qadir Trust case, which alleges that the PTI chief and his wife obtained billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from a real estate firm for legalising Rs 50 billion that was identified and returned to the country by the UK during the previous PTI government.
But what is the Al Qadir Trust case and why has the former premier been implicated in it? It all started five years ago when the National Crime Agency (NCA) of the United Kingdom agreed to a settlement worth £190 million with the family of property tycoon Malik Riaz. According to the statement released by the NCA, the settlement included a UK property — 1 Hyde Park Place, London, W2 2LH — valued at approximately £50 million and all of the funds landed in the frozen accounts of Malik Riaz.
Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn.com reported the first record of the NCA’s move to probe the property and assets belonging to Riaz in the UK surfaced in December 2018, shortly after the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) came to power. The crime agency in a press release dated Aug 14, 2019 stated: “The NCA has been granted freezing orders on eight bank accounts containing a total of more than £100 million, which is suspected to have derived from bribery and corruption in an overseas nation. Approximately £20m held by a linked individual was frozen following a hearing in December 2018.”
Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had accepted Riaz’s offer of Rs 460 bn as settlement dues by his real estate firm, Bahria Town Ltd, after it was found to have illegally acquired thousands of acres of land on Karachi’s outskirts in district Malir.
Hours after the NCA verdict, Malik Riaz had tweeted that the recovered amount would go to the Supreme Court against the fine worth Rs 460 bn.
Subsequently, the money was transferred to the Supreme Court’s accounts, instead of the Government of Pakistan’s account. When the NCA had announced its decision on Dec 3, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Accountability Mirza Shahzad Akbar had claimed that the money would directly come to the state.
On being questioned over this ambiguity later, SAPM Akbar had replied: “Is the Supreme Court not part of the government? So if the money goes to the apex court, it means that the money comes to the state.”
The SAPM had also refused to entertain questions regarding the origin of the money and how it had come to be stashed away abroad, citing confidentiality clauses between the parties involved in the case, including the UK. “We have inked a bond of confidentiality with the UK government and therefore we cannot talk about the details of the case,” he told a presser.
In June 2022, the matter resurfaced after an alleged audio leak, purportedly of a telephone conversation between Malik Riaz and his daughter, wherein the two could be heard talking about the supposed demands of Farah Khan aka Gogi — a friend of Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi — against some alleged favours from the previous government of Imran Khan. The woman, believed to be Riaz’s daughter, told her father that Farah had told her that the (former) first lady had asked her not to accept a three-karat diamond ring and demanded a five-karat one.
Subsequently, Riaz had denied his role in any political matters, and in a tweet claimed that the leaked audio clip attributed to him and his daughter was “fabricated”.
A week later on June 14, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah had accused Imran and his wife of accepting Rs5bn and hundreds of kanals of land for protecting the real estate firm in a money laundering case.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Sanaullah said Bahria Town had “illegally transferred” Rs50bn to a Pakistani national in the UK. The transfer, he said, was identified by the UK’s National Crime Agency, which subsequently informed the then PTI government of the crime.
Sanaullah claimed that Imran, the prime minister at the time, had tasked Shehzad Akbar, ex-PM’s aide on accountability, to resolve the matter. Akbar “settled” the entire case, while the Rs50bn — which was state property and belonged to the national treasury — was adjusted against Bahria Town’s liability, the interior minister had alleged.
The next day, the federal cabinet constituted a committee to probe into Imran and his wife Bushra’s alleged involvement in the case.
According to Sanaullah, Bahria Town had donated hundreds of acres of land to Al-Qadir Trust, with the agreement bearing signatures of the real estate developer’s donors and Bushra Khan — the wife of former premier Imran.
