Yet again: PTI changes counsel in foreign funding case

Saqlain Haider, who had been representing party prior to Babar Awan, re-inducted

ISLAMABAD: The scrutiny committee constituted by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to audit the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) bank accounts in connection with a foreign funding case met on Tuesday after a lapse of almost 3 months only to adjourn the sitting for over two weeks.

The meeting was scheduled to further securitise the PTI accounts particularly in light of all the PTI bank statements for the period from 2009-13 requisitioned by the ECP from the State Bank of Pakistan.

However, the committee was informed that Saqlain Haider would now represent the PTI in lieu of Babar Awan. Interestingly, Haider was the PTI’s lawyer in the case prior to his replacement with Awan a few months back.



Later, the committee meeting was adjourned till Oct 19 as the replaced PTI lawyer asked the ECP panel to give him more time, adding that he had come without the PTI’s finance team.

The scrutiny committee was formed on March 27 of this year to scrutinise PTI foreign funding accounts in one month. The committee held its first meeting on April 3.

However due to apparent lack of the PTI’s cooperation to submit its accounts and bank statements, the committee was given another two-month time till July 3 to conclude the scrutiny.

Despite the extension, the PTI continued to stall submission of its accounts details including bank statements sought by the committee for the period from 2009 to 2013. Between April and end of June this year, the committee met on 19 occasions with little progress.

Finally, the ECP decided to request the SBP under the powers vested in it under the Constitution to provide the details. Later, the SBP directed all the scheduled banks of Pakistan to submit the PTI accounts details to the ECP by July 16 of this year.

The foreign funding case was first filed in November 2014 by the PTI’s former central vice president Akbar S Babar, who had alleged corruption and other illegalities in the party’s funding.

Since start of the case, the PTI has repeatedly challenged the ECP’s jurisdiction to scrutinise the PTI accounts and challenged the PTI membership of the petitioner Akbar S Babar.

The ECP and subsequently the Islamabad High Court (IHC) passed more than one judgments validating the ECP jurisdiction and the PTI membership of the petitioner.

The last PTI writ petition in the IHC challenging formation of the ECP scrutiny committee to audit PTI foreign funding and the PTI membership of Babar was dismissed by a single IHC bench on July 24.

All the previous PTI attempts challenging the ECP jurisdiction and the PTI membership of the petitioner have failed and the matter resolved in favour of the petitioner including the ECP verdict of May 8, 2017 and IHC verdict of July 24, 2018.

However, contrary to its stated public position of not challenging the ECP’s right to scrutinise its accounts, the PTI once again challenged the IHC verdict by filing the fifth writ petition this time before a division of the IHC.