The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) received a sum of over US $2 million from a foreign company owned by businessman Arif Naqvi in the run up to the 2013 elections, according to the scrutiny committee report from the Election of Commission of Pakistan.
This money came from a company named Wootton Cricket Limited, and represents the largest such donation to the PTI from a foreign source. It would violate the Political Parties Order 2002, where the rules on foreign funding mean that a party in violation could face dissolution.
Arif Naqvi already faces fraud allegations in the US, over the private equity firm that he founded, The Abraaj Group. US prosecutors claim that he was masterminding a global criminal conspiracy, where he took hundreds of millions of dollars and misused money from investors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bank of America, public pension funds, and the US, UK and French governments. It is alleged that Abraaj improperly or fraudulently transferred more than $ 780 million to Arif Naqvi and other parties, and that he misappropriated more than $385 million of those funds, returning the balance to Abraaj, according to Abraaj’s liquidators.
