Charges of corruption
French,
Polish, Spanish, and Swiss documents have fueled the charges of corruption against Bhutto and her husband. Bhutto and her
husband faced a number of legal proceedings, including a charge of laundering money through Swiss banks. Her husband, Asif
Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison on similar corruption charges. Zardari, released from jail in 2004, has suggested
that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups have supported his claim that his rights were violated.
In 1998
New York Times investigative report indicates that Pakistani investigators
have documents that uncover a network of bank accounts, all linked to the family's lawyer in Switzerland,
with Asif Zardari as the principal shareholder. According to the article, documents released by the French authorities indicated
that Zardari offered exclusive rights to, a French aircraft manufacturer, to replace the air force's Fighter aircraft in exchange
for a 5% commission to be paid to a Swiss corporation controlled by Zardari. The article also said a Dubai
company received an exclusive license to import gold into Pakistan
for which Asif Zardari received payments of more than $10 million into his Dubai-based Citibank accounts. The owner of the
company denied that he had made payments to Zardari and claims the documents were forged. Bhutto maintained that the charges
leveled against her and her husband were purely political. An Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) report supports Bhutto's claim. It presents information suggesting
that Benazir Bhutto was ousted from power in 1990 as a result of a witch hunt approved by then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
The AGP report says Khan illegally paid legal advisers 28 million rupees to file 19 corruption cases against Bhutto and her
husband in 1990-92
The assets
held by Bhutto and her husband have been scrutinized. The prosecutors have alleged that their Swiss bank accounts contain
£740 million Zardari also bought a mansion and estate worth over £4 million in Surrey
The Pakistani investigations have tied other overseas properties to Zardari's family. These include a $2.5 million
manor in Normandy owned by Zardari's parents, who had modest assets
at the time of his marriage. Bhutto denied holding substantive overseas assets.
Corruption
Evidence Provided
Switzerland
On August 6 They were given six-month suspended jail terms, fined $50,000 each and were ordered to pay $11 million
to the Pakistani government. The six-year trial concluded that Bhutto and Zardari deposited in Swiss accounts $10 million
given to them by a Swiss company in exchange for a contract in Pakistan.
The couple said they would appeal. The Pakistani investigators say Zardari opened a Citibank account in Geneva
in 1995 through which they say he passed some $40 million of the $100 million he received in payoffs from foreign companies
doing business in Pakistan. In October
2007, Daniel Zappelli, chief prosecutor of the canton of, said he received the conclusions of a money laundering investigation
against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on October 29, but it was unclear whether there would be any further
legal action against her in Switzerland.
Poland
The Polish Government has given Pakistan
500 pages of documentation relating to corruption allegations against Benazir Bhutto and her husband. These charges are in
regard to the purchase of 8,000 tractors in a 1997 deal. According to Pakistani officials, the Polish papers contain details
of illegal commissions paid by the tractor company in return for agreeing to their contract. It was alleged that the arrangement
"skimmed" Rs 103 mn rupees ($2 million) in kickbacks. "The documentary evidence received from Poland confirms the scheme of kickbacks laid out by Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto
in the name of (the) launching of Awami tractor scheme said. Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari allegedly received a 7.15% commission
on the purchase through their front men, Jens Schlegelmilch and Didier Plantin of Dargal S.A., who received about $1.969 million for supplying 5,
France
Potentially the most lucrative deal alleged in the documents involved the effort by, a French military contractor.
French authorities indicated in 1998 that Bhutto's husband, Zardari, offered exclusive rights to Dassault to replace the air
force’s fighter jets in exchange for a five percent commission to be paid to a corporation in Switzerland controlled by Zardari.
At the time, French corruption laws forbade bribery of French officials but permitted payoffs to foreign officials,
and even made the payoffs in. However, France
changed this law in 2000.
Western Asia
In the largest single payment investigators have uncovered, Gold as an investment dealer in Western
Asia was alleged to have deposited at least $10 million into one of Zardari's accounts after the Bhutto government
gave him a Monopoly on imports that sustained. Pakistan’s coast,
stretching from Karachi to the border with Iran
has long been a gold smugglers' haven. Until the beginning of Bhutto's second term, the trade, running into hundreds of millions
of dollars a year, was unregulated, with slivers of gold called biscuits, and larger weights in bullion, carried on planes
and boats that travel between the Persian Gulf and the largely unguarded Pakistani coast.
Shortly after Bhutto returned as prime minister in 1993, a Pakistani bullion trader in Dubai, Abdul Razzak Yaqub, proposed a deal: in return for the exclusive right to import gold,
Razzak would help the government regularize the trade. In November 1994, Pakistan's
Commerce Ministry wrote to Razzak informing him that he had been granted a license that made him, for at least the next two
years, Pakistan's sole authorized gold
importer. In an interview in his office in Dubai, Razzak acknowledged that he had used the license to import more than $500
million in gold into Pakistan, and that he had traveled to Islamabad several
times to meet with Bhutto and Zardari. But he denied that there had been any corruption or secret deals. "I have not paid
a single cent to Zardari," he said. Razzak claims that someone in Pakistan
who wished to destroy his reputation had contrived to have his company wrongly identified as the depositor. "Somebody in the
bank has cooperated with my enemies to make false documents," he said.
Bhutto's niece and others have publicly accused Bhutto of complicity in the killing of her brother Murtaza Bhutto
in 1996 by uniformed police officers whilst she was Prime Minister.
