ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) will finally begin the first-ever audit of lawmakers’ statements of assets and liabilities early next week.

A senior official of the ECP told Dawn that scrutiny of statements of assets of members of the Senate and national and provincial assemblies for the financial year that ended on June 30, 2016, was to commence on Dec 1, but decision on modus operandi and final approval of the standard operating procedure (SOP) delayed it.

He said initially it had been proposed that statements of 25 per cent of lawmakers should be randomly audited, but the commission has decided to scrutinise 100 per cent statements.

He said the ECP would proceed against those found guilty of concealing their assets or making any other false declarations under Section 82 of the Representation of Peoples Act (ROPA).

Section 82 of the ROPA prescribes punishment of imprisonment for a term up to three years for a person guilty of corrupt practice, and conviction also entails disqualification from being a lawmaker or contesting polls.

All members of national and provincial assemblies are bound under Section 42A (1) of the ROPA to submit a statement of assets and liabilities of their own, along with those of their spouses and dependents annually to the commission by the thirtieth day of September each year. Members of the Senate are also required to do the same under Section 25A of the Senate (elections) Act, 1975.

The official pointed out that Section 42A (4) of the Constitution reads: “[w]here a member submits the statement of assets and liabilities under sub-section (1) which is found to be false in material particulars, he may be proceeded against under Section 82 for committing the offence of corrupt practice.”

The official pointed out that according to Section 100 (1) of Representation of Peoples’ Act “where a person has been 4[convicted for having exceeded the limit of election expenses laid down by section 49 or having failed to file the return of election expenses in accordance with section 50 or for any other] offence under this Act, or has been found guilty of any corrupt or illegal practice by a Tribunal, he shall, be disqualified, for such period not exceeding five years as may be specified in the order from being or being elected as, a member of an Assembly”.

A source told Dawn that in all probability the statements of assets and liabilities of 104 senators would be audited first.

Under the approved procedure, the process will start with classification of the statements of assets. The statements will be divided in four slabs of value starting from Rs one million to beyond Rs one billion value. The type of assets will also be categorised and will include agricultural property, corporate or business, real estate property; industrial establishments and domestic and offshore investments and entities.

The directorate of political finance, if required, will compare a statement of a member with his statements submitted in the past two years. This simple comparison may indicate range of variation of the information in respect of cost, changing business trends, acquisition and utilisation of the assets during the past two years and values of expenditure. The variation beyond the common sense and/or envisaged business trends during these three years may help classifying it as a simple case with acceptable range of increase/decrease in values or needing further evidence for justification of the reported variations in different values. The political finance wing may ask for the required evidence from the submitter of the form of the statements of assets and liabilities and if the evidence was still found not appropriate to support the variation trends, he may request for corroboration from the concerned state agencies for an informed decision.

This would be the prime responsibility of the political finance wing to frame issues in each form. The issues it would be required to identify will include huge variations in different values i.e. cost, market values, expenditure and earnings etc, change in business information; non-compatibility of asset formation with earning information or revenue and expenditure figures, dependents information and missing information, if any.

The political finance wing, if required, would propose for approval of the commission to obtain information in respect of corroboration of the incompatible increased value in a form from the Federal Board of Revenue; the auditor general, provincial board(s) of revenue; Federal Investigation Agency and utilities agencies.

Published in Dawn December 11th, 2016