20 December 2004	Monday	07 Ziqa'ad 1425

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has dismissed corruption charges against PPP leaders as "concocted and fabricated" designed only to punish them for supporting democracy.

Commenting on press reports that the accountability courts have once again begun hearings in four cases - assets, ARY Gold, BMW and pre-shipment inspection contract - against party chairperson Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari, a PPP spokesman here Sunday said the "concocted case of BMW involves the import of a second-hand car which according to the prosecution itself was imported by a person other than Mr Zardari.

"Even if the car had been imported by Mr Zardari there is not a shred of evidence by which it could be sent to an accountability court," Senator Farhatullah Babar said.

The case was fabricated soon after Mr Zardari was granted bail in the last of cases against him two years back and it was designed solely to keep him in jail, he maintained.

In the assets case, the spokesman said, "the disputed assets have been placed at the door of Mr Zardari and through him at the door of his wife. Using the disputed assets as a reason for a collateral purpose, the undisputed and owned assets of the couple were frozen".

The real owners of the disputed assets are being told to commit perjury or face losing their property through accountability courts. "This is naked bribe and blackmail by the state apparatus and totalitarianism at its worst", Mr Babar said.

The regime is wantonly abusing the national treasury by perjuring the course of justice and fabricating cases against its opponents. But it was withdrawing cases against those, including some federal ministers, MQM and MMA leaders, who join up with the regime, he said.