Already embroiled in several corruption charges, Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari is in the thick of another scam again. This one involves kickback to the tune of millions of dollars from the sale of three French submarines to the Pakistan navy in 1994.
Investigators say the non-payment of the full kickback amount may have led to the murder of 11 French nationals in a 2002. A French newspaper, Daily Liberation, citing documents, has claimed that during the second tenure of her wife Benazir Bhutto as the prime minister, Zardari had received $4.3 million in kickback from the sale of three Agosta 90 submarines for $1.237 billion. These were sent to Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau by the British authorities in April 2001.
The documents indicate that Zardari received several large payments into his Swiss bank accounts from a Lebanese businessman, Abdulrahman el-Assir, in 1994 and 1995.
According to the report, a former executive of the French naval defence company DCN, French authorities chose el-Assir as intermediary in the deal. He allegedly deposited a total of $1.3 million in Zardari’s bank accounts between August 15 and August 30, 1994, one month before the submarine contract was signed, and then $1.2 million and $1.8 million one year later.
Legal proceedings against Zardari were dropped in April 2008, before he was elected president. The ongoing investigation in Paris into the May 8, 2002, terror attack that killed 11 DCN employees in Karachi may shed new light on the submarine purchase.
According to the French paper, the magistrate looking into the bombing has rejected the role of al Qaeda. He is now considering the possibility that it was carried out by Pakistanis, either because only 85% of the agreed kickbacks to politicians had been paid or because of negotiations carried out by French authorities to sell submarines to India.
Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said, ‘This is actually new regurgitation of an old story which was already contradicted by French president Sarkozy on July 11 this year as “untrue” and “mischievous”.
