Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader and former Punjab chief minister Mian Manzoor Ahmad Wattoo while presenting family assets before the media has claimed that the party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is also going to declare his assets before the nation.

The PPP leader has demanded Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to announce his assets before the nation. Addressing a huge press conference here at the Lahore Press Club on Friday, Wattoo confirmed the media that he had already taken the PPP chairman into confidence to declare his assets before the media that was highly appreciated by Bilawal.

Wattoo distributed a copy of details of his family’s assets and claimed that neither he nor anyone of his family members had foreign accounts or properties abroad. Interestingly, Wattoo provided the details of millions of rupees he had borrowed from different banks like the Agriculture Bank and the Bank of Punjab between 1985 and 2012, but he did not mention about how he paid back the money to the banks concerned.

He said that he initially declared his assets in 1999 by publishing an advertisement in national newspapers to establish a precedent of self-accountability in the country and other leaders should also follow him. He termed the allegations of owning Surrey Palace propaganda against his party leader and former president Asif Ali Zardari.

Wattoo has been elected four times as member of the National Assembly and provincial assembly since 1985. He has served as Punjab Assembly speaker, Punjab chief minister and federal minister for Kashmir Affairs but he was defeated in the last general elections in 2013.