Daily Times

There used to be days when one “lakh” was considered a huge sum; even a fortune. As per a common adage then, a lakh was either supposed to be with a Lakhee, a fabulously rich person, or a braggart. The joys of ancient times. Of late, billions have been flying back and forth with abundance. To further confound the unsuspecting citizenry, some of the flying billions are in Uncle Sam’s currency – the galloping dollar. It leaves you aghast.

For instance, in July 2017, Asif Zardari had blamed Nawaz Sharif for looting the nation to the tune of Rs 2,000 billion. During the same month of the same year, Shahbaz Sharif, the then chief minister of Punjab, filed a Rs 10 billion defamation suit against PTI chief, Imran Khan, for levelling some accusations against him.

Exactly four years later, in July 2021, NAB claims to have recovered Rs 33 billion from AZ’s fake accounts. The federal minister of information noted that the actual amount in the fake account of the PPP supremo could be Rs 5,000 billion. All amounts either discovered in fake accounts or slapped in defamation suits are mostly in billions. If the figure of a billion were to degrade in value and public perception, it’s now more than ever.

Lately, Qadir Khan Mandokhel had served a defamation notice of Rs 58 billion to Information Adviser to Punjab CM, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, for slapping and ridiculing him during a television show. Mandokhel must have calculated the defamation amount meticulously, in accordance with the impact of the slap, since Dr Awan seems to have a heavy hand. So much in levity about the billions.

The Broadsheet failed to return a penny of the so-called looted wealth to our kitty

However, when talking of big money seriously, Kaveh Moussavi and his company Broadsheet are bound to pop up. Broadsheet is in the business of unearthing the wealth allegedly plundered by the individuals of various countries and returning the same to where it rightfully belonged. Some say that the billboard of the company that displays Broadsheet (written on it in bold letters) also claims to be “Diggers of Plundered Wealth.” Maybe on this count, Gen Pervez Musharraf’s men hired this company to locate the wealth siphoned by politicians and businessmen, which was stashed abroad.

Since the plundered wealth runs into billions of dollars, Broadsheet squeezes out huge amounts for rendering its services. When Pakistan hired Broadsheet to dig out the wealth plundered by the politicians et al, the nation was given the news that as the laundered billions were on their way into the national coffers, the country wouldn’t have to beg for foreign loans anymore.

The outcome of the Broadsheet saga however ended in a sordid story. Instead of repatriating the looted wealth back to the country, Broadsheet extorted huge amounts by suing Pakistan in the international courts. The company obtained an edict in its favour from a court in the UK under which the company had to be paid a whopping sum of $28.7 million equivalent to more than Rs 4.7 billion. This was the penalty amount the court imposed upon us for terminating Broadsheet’s services and abrogating the contract.

The federal government quietly approved the payment and the Pakistan High Commission in the UK transferred the amount to Broadsheet on behalf of the NAB. It left Moussavi richer by millions of dollars. The tragic part is that while the Broadsheet failed to return a penny of the so-called looted wealth to our kitty, the company extorted huge sums of money from this poor nation by way of fines.

But the real threat of losing billions is posed by the mishandling of the Reko Diq affair. In 1998, the Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) signed a contract with the Balochistan government; allowing the company to “build and operate a world class copper-gold open-pit mine at a cost of about $ 3.3 billion” in the mining area leased to it. The progress on the project suddenly came to a standstill when the then chief justice cancelled the lease agreement in 2011. He declared it as a “lease granted in a non-transparent manner.”

Between 1998 and 2011, TCC claimed to have invested $ 220 million by moving and installing the equipment for the mining project. To recover its investment, TCC filed a case in the World Bank arbitration tribunal in 2012. The tribunal passed the ruling and fixed a $ 5.97 billion award against Pakistan for cancelling the lease agreement. The tribunal had worked out the amount of award by calculating the profit that TCC could have made in 56 years of the lease period. While the country faces TCC’s damage claims in the international courts, the chief justice who had terminated the Reko Diq mining contract must be leading a retired life in peace and tranquillity. The stroke of his honourable pen pushed the country into a labyrinth of litigations.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and can be reached at pinecity@gmail.com