Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday said he was well aware of the ‘forces’ behind the rejuvenated accountability drive, targeting the political leadership of the country.

“We all know who’s behind ‘NABgardi’… We have been battling against them [those pulling the strings] for the last three generations, and now we’ve become unstoppable,” he said in a tweet on Tuesday.

The statement comes hours after Bilawal’s spokesperson Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar launched an attack on the government, saying the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was targeting the PPP by becoming a tool of the incumbent government being used for political victimisation. Refuting reports of noncompliance, he confirmed that the party chairman would appear before the anti-graft watchdog in Islamabad on May 17.

Bilawal and his father former president Asif Ali Zardari have been summoned in connection with an ongoing investigation being conducted by the anti-graft watchdog. The Supreme Court forwarded a joint investigation team (JIT) report in the fake bank accounts scandal to the NAB and directed it to probe money laundering of billions of rupees through fictitious bank accounts.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) named Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur, Omni Group Chairman Anwar Majeed, his sons and around 10 others as suspects in an interim charge sheet filed in a banking court in August last year.

Last month, the NAB filed its first interim reference in the fake bank accounts case, nominating nine accused for misuse of authority and illegal allotment of amenity plots in Karachi.

The anti-corruption watchdog’s prosecutors submitted the reference in an accountability court in Islamabad. The accused included eight senior government officials and the director of a private company.

In March, the NAB summoned Bilawal and Zardari in a case, accusing them of illegal transfer of forest land to Pak Lane Estate Company (pvt) Ltd.