Ephedrine case: Gilani family being deliberately targeted, says Musa Gilani

Says he never had a person­al aide named Tauqee­r, had and execut­ed honeym­oon plan before SC summon was issued.

After being implicated in the Rs7 billion Berlex Lab International ephedrine quota allocation scam Ali Musa Gilani, the younger son of Prime Minister Gilani said that his family was deliberately being targeted and that not a shred of concrete evidence had been presented against him.

Speaking on Express News programme To the Point with Shahzeb Khanzada, Gilani maintained his innocence saying Brigadier Fahim, who had testified in the Supreme Court against him, had yet to present solid evidence against him.

"From what I have heard on television, a person who claimed he had influential links turned up and asked for the quota," he said.

Explaining his absence from the country as the Supreme Court issued him summons, Gilani said that he had plans of taking his honeymoon after his November wedding. “I got married on November 27, on the 28^th, I started campaigning for the elections,” he said adding “I got elected on February 25, applied for visa which takes one month to process and then left the country. “

He maintained that he had left the country before the Supreme Court even issued summons.

But the twists were not over yet as Gilani went on to claim that he had never received any summons. “I was in Islamabad to listen to the President’s address in the joint session and did not receive any summons,” he said adding that once he heard about it on the media, he wrote a letter to the investigating officer Zulfiqar, then DG Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) Major General Syed Shakil Hussian, and Secretary ANF that he had nothing to do with the case.

“Only one Brigadier Fahim is talking about it, no other officer has come forward,” he questioned.

Ephedrine quota is not under the domain of ANF

Ali Musa Gilani, while claiming that he was probably not even in the country when the quota had been allotted, said that the ANF was working outside its domain on the egregious quota allotted to Berlex Laboratories International.

“The case is outside ANF’s domain, it comes under the drug act and is up to drug inspectors to investigate and act on this,” he said.

Alleging that his case had been deliberately picked up by the Supreme Court, he said that there were at least a 100 cases regarding the same drug under the drug act pending in lower courts. “All this [SC taking up the case] does is build pressure on the lower courts,” Gilani said.

‘Musa Gilani impersonators making hay on my name’

Alerting to the presence of ‘fake’ Musa Gilani’s exhorting numerous officials for favours, Gilani said that he himself had one such impersonator arrested from Multan, while DPO Okara had arrested another.

He categorically denied that any person by the name of “Tauqeer”, who had on numerous occasions identified himself as the secretary of Gilani, had been in his service as a personal aide.

“Till I was elected as an MNA, the Prime Minister had strictly forbidden us to call up any official except the CCPO or other local government officials in Multan to solve problems of people of our constituency,” Gilani said.

He also blamed the authorities for immediately picking up any thing remotely linked to the Gilani family.

When asked whether the Army was involved in a vendetta against his family, Gilani said “some entity other than the Army is involved in fanning this.”