The sordid saga of Broadsheet has come back after twenty years to bite NAB in the backside. Unfortunately, a tidy sum of taxpayers’ money has been forked over to repair the damage. A story of incompetence, opacity, deceit and corruption is worth telling.
General Pervez Musharraf set up NAB in 2000 with two main objectives: to witch hunt “corrupt” politicians opposed to him; and blackmail others into backing and providing him legitimacy. Gen Syed M Amjad, the first NAB Chairman, was immediately hooked by a known fraudster, Tariq Fawad, to tie up with another dubious character in the US, Jerry James, to set up Broadsheet in the Isle of Man and contract with it to go after a list of 200 corrupt Pakistanis alleged to have billions stashed abroad. No matter that neither James nor Broadsheet had any direct previous experience of doing such a job, which leads to the conclusion that either Gen Amjad was hoodwinked by Fawad and James or benefited from such an arrangement.
Problems arose in 2001-02 after Broadsheet identified some alleged crooks and unearthed their “corruption” funds. When NAB went after them, General Musharraf ordered some names on the list to be deleted for political reasons. Broadsheet objected to this unilateral deletion of targets since it stood to get 20% of the recovered funds from them. Further complications set in when NAB insisted that the contract referred only to foreign funds while Broadsheet insisted it also covered funds stashed in Pakistan. In 2003, NAB revoked the contract. Broadsheet argued it couldn’t do so without its consent, and sued for breach of contract and recovery of monies potentially due to it.
Meanwhile, Broadsheet went into liquidation. James set up a dummy “Broadsheet” company in the US and persuaded NAB, via Tariq Fawad, to award USD1.5m in damages to it. Enter Kaveh Moussavi, another dubious character tainted by a contempt of court conviction. Moussavi persuaded the Liquidators in the Isle of Man to make him a party to the proceedings so that he could continue to sue NAB for breach of contract. The contest dragged on until 2016 when a UK court held against NAB on all counts and appointed an Arbitrator by mutual consent of both parties to calculate and award damages.
Meanwhile, Moussavi claimed to discover a stash in three foreign banks of up to USD1billion in loot allegedly plundered by Nawaz Sharif. Through various shady intermediaries, he tried to hook the PTI government in late 2018 to contract with him to recover the money and also pay up damages for NAB’s earlier violations of the contract. The PTI government was tempted but decided not to bite. In mid 2020, the Arbitrator ordered NAB to cough up nearly USD28m to Broadsheet-in-Liquidation! In September, NAB transferred over USD27m to the Pakistan Embassy account in United National Bank LLC in London for eventual payment against the Award. Moussavi discovered this and obtained a court order on UBL to pay him his dues. Then he leaked his version of events to the media, accusing Imran Khan of not being committed to the anti-corruption crusade by refusing to hire him to go after Nawaz Sharif’s alleged USD1b in foreign accounts.
Now the GOP says it is going to sue UBL for unilaterally releasing the funds to Moussavi. This is ridiculous, considering that the funds were earlier transferred to UBL for precisely this reason. The GOP has no case because UBL cannot defy a court order under any circumstances. The PTI government is also spinning the story that the London Court adjudged Nawaz Sharif’s alleged wealth from corruption to be over USD800m, “proof” of his corruption! Yet the fact is that the GOP even challenged as excessive the final determination of Nawaz Sharif’s alleged wealth at USD100m by the Arbitrator out of which 20% were deemed payable to Broadsheet. The greater irony is that the figure of USD800m+ is not a figment of the London Court’s imagination or calculation but obtained on the basis of a JIT set up in 2017 in Pakistan and NAB court proceedings supervised by a supreme court judge, not a penny of which has been recovered by NAB from Nawaz Sharif.
Some clear conclusions can be drawn. First, the NAB Generals from 2000-2008 were unaccountable, inefficient and politically corrupt. The contract they drew up with Broadsheet was full of loopholes, their lawyers were nincompoops, their intermediaries were shady. Tariq Fawad, Jerry James and Kaveh Moussavi were sharp operators who extracted their pounds of flesh. The final award is also owed to the inexplicable calculations of the JIT ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and not to any investigative unearthing by Broadsheet.
Now the PTI has determined to set up a commission of inquiry under a judge to ascertain the truth behind the Broadsheet affair. Since the facts are already well established after the release of all the documents related to this episode, followed by undenied stories of conversations between Moussavi and various intermediaries, we can reasonably surmise that the object of this exercise is to somehow put the spotlight on the PTI’s opponents. Imran Khan has already pointed an accusing finger at General Musharraf for giving an NRO to Nawaz Sharif and Co, along with many other targets on the list of 200 originally supplied to Broadsheet by NAB. There is also speculation that the ground will be prepared to assign the task of going after the hidden wealth of Nawaz Sharif and Co abroad to Moussavi or someone else. To be sure, there are a couple of credible international companies which would be happy to undertake such a project.
If we are alarmed by the level of incompetence and corruption of civil-military bureaucrats and lawyers in the Broadsheet case, get ready for a melt down when Pakistani assets abroad, including the Roosevelt hotel owned by PIA, are seized and encashed by Tethyan Copper Company in the Reko Diq case which has been awarded nearly USD7billion in damages for breach of contract.
General Pervez Musharraf set up NAB in 2000 with two main objectives: to witch hunt “corrupt” politicians opposed to him; and blackmail others into backing and providing him legitimacy. Gen Syed M Amjad, the first NAB Chairman, was immediately hooked by a known fraudster, Tariq Fawad, to tie up with another dubious character in the US, Jerry James, to set up Broadsheet in the Isle of Man and contract with it to go after a list of 200 corrupt Pakistanis alleged to have billions stashed abroad. No matter that neither James nor Broadsheet had any direct previous experience of doing such a job, which leads to the conclusion that either Gen Amjad was hoodwinked by Fawad and James or benefited from such an arrangement.
Problems arose in 2001-02 after Broadsheet identified some alleged crooks and unearthed their “corruption” funds. When NAB went after them, General Musharraf ordered some names on the list to be deleted for political reasons. Broadsheet objected to this unilateral deletion of targets since it stood to get 20% of the recovered funds from them. Further complications set in when NAB insisted that the contract referred only to foreign funds while Broadsheet insisted it also covered funds stashed in Pakistan. In 2003, NAB revoked the contract. Broadsheet argued it couldn’t do so without its consent, and sued for breach of contract and recovery of monies potentially due to it.
Meanwhile, Broadsheet went into liquidation. James set up a dummy “Broadsheet” company in the US and persuaded NAB, via Tariq Fawad, to award USD1.5m in damages to it. Enter Kaveh Moussavi, another dubious character tainted by a contempt of court conviction. Moussavi persuaded the Liquidators in the Isle of Man to make him a party to the proceedings so that he could continue to sue NAB for breach of contract. The contest dragged on until 2016 when a UK court held against NAB on all counts and appointed an Arbitrator by mutual consent of both parties to calculate and award damages.
Meanwhile, Moussavi claimed to discover a stash in three foreign banks of up to USD1billion in loot allegedly plundered by Nawaz Sharif. Through various shady intermediaries, he tried to hook the PTI government in late 2018 to contract with him to recover the money and also pay up damages for NAB’s earlier violations of the contract. The PTI government was tempted but decided not to bite. In mid 2020, the Arbitrator ordered NAB to cough up nearly USD28m to Broadsheet-in-Liquidation! In September, NAB transferred over USD27m to the Pakistan Embassy account in United National Bank LLC in London for eventual payment against the Award. Moussavi discovered this and obtained a court order on UBL to pay him his dues. Then he leaked his version of events to the media, accusing Imran Khan of not being committed to the anti-corruption crusade by refusing to hire him to go after Nawaz Sharif’s alleged USD1b in foreign accounts.
Now the GOP says it is going to sue UBL for unilaterally releasing the funds to Moussavi. This is ridiculous, considering that the funds were earlier transferred to UBL for precisely this reason. The GOP has no case because UBL cannot defy a court order under any circumstances. The PTI government is also spinning the story that the London Court adjudged Nawaz Sharif’s alleged wealth from corruption to be over USD800m, “proof” of his corruption! Yet the fact is that the GOP even challenged as excessive the final determination of Nawaz Sharif’s alleged wealth at USD100m by the Arbitrator out of which 20% were deemed payable to Broadsheet. The greater irony is that the figure of USD800m+ is not a figment of the London Court’s imagination or calculation but obtained on the basis of a JIT set up in 2017 in Pakistan and NAB court proceedings supervised by a supreme court judge, not a penny of which has been recovered by NAB from Nawaz Sharif.
Some clear conclusions can be drawn. First, the NAB Generals from 2000-2008 were unaccountable, inefficient and politically corrupt. The contract they drew up with Broadsheet was full of loopholes, their lawyers were nincompoops, their intermediaries were shady. Tariq Fawad, Jerry James and Kaveh Moussavi were sharp operators who extracted their pounds of flesh. The final award is also owed to the inexplicable calculations of the JIT ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and not to any investigative unearthing by Broadsheet.
Now the PTI has determined to set up a commission of inquiry under a judge to ascertain the truth behind the Broadsheet affair. Since the facts are already well established after the release of all the documents related to this episode, followed by undenied stories of conversations between Moussavi and various intermediaries, we can reasonably surmise that the object of this exercise is to somehow put the spotlight on the PTI’s opponents. Imran Khan has already pointed an accusing finger at General Musharraf for giving an NRO to Nawaz Sharif and Co, along with many other targets on the list of 200 originally supplied to Broadsheet by NAB. There is also speculation that the ground will be prepared to assign the task of going after the hidden wealth of Nawaz Sharif and Co abroad to Moussavi or someone else. To be sure, there are a couple of credible international companies which would be happy to undertake such a project.
If we are alarmed by the level of incompetence and corruption of civil-military bureaucrats and lawyers in the Broadsheet case, get ready for a melt down when Pakistani assets abroad, including the Roosevelt hotel owned by PIA, are seized and encashed by Tethyan Copper Company in the Reko Diq case which has been awarded nearly USD7billion in damages for breach of contract.