Why has NAB summoned Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari?

Pakistan’s accountability watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), will be quizzing Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), at its Rawalpindi office on Tuesday.

The charge against Bilawal is that the company he, and his father, own allegedly set up fake bank accounts to transfer billions of rupees received as kickbacks and bribes.

On the recommendation of a Joint Investigation Team, NAB has opened up two cases against the PPP leader. Of which, he has already been cleared of all charges in one.

In July, the Bureau removed Bilawal’s name from a case involving Park Lane Estate Pvt. Ltd, a construction company in Karachi. The PPP chairman was a 25 per cent beneficial owner of the company. As it withdrew the case, the anti-corruption body admitted that it did not find any evidence to directly link the younger Zardari to the fraudulent transfer of funds.

What is the case against Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari?

The second case against Zardari, for which he has been summoned on December 24, relates to a company titled, JV Opal 225. The company is a joint venture between the Zardari Group Pvt. Ltd — of which Bilawal is a director — and a large real-estate business.

JV Opal was set up in 2011 and had its office on a property in Karachi owned by the Zardari Group. From 2011 to 2013, the company did not generate any revenue, yet it purchased major assets, agriculture lands, commercial and residential properties in Islamabad and Karachi, states the JIT report.

The only amount it received, during this period, was of Rs1.2 billion from its business partner, the real-estate firm, which, according to the JIT report, was not due to the Zardari Group.

The investigators suspect that this payment was made by the real-estate company as a bribe or kickback for getting favors from the Sindh government in the form of illegal allotment of state land.

While the JIT has not been able to make a direct link between the Bhutto scion and the fake accounts, it states that money stashed in these fictitious bank accounts was used to pay the water and sewerage bill of the Bilawal House, an amount to a restaurant that catered an event, to purchase airplane tickets for Bilawal and his younger sister, and to renovate his bomb-proof container and bullet-proof vehicles.

In the fake bank accounts case, there are a total of 24 accused, including Asif Ali Zardari and his sister.