ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) finally submitted account statements and documents detailing the funding it received from foreign sources over the past seven years to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday.

The party had been avoiding submitting the required documents for nearly two years for one reason or the other; first approaching the Supreme Court to challenge the commission’s jurisdiction in the matter and later challenging the maintainability of the case before the high court.

The case was filed before the ECP in 2014 by Akbar S. Babar, a dissident founder member of the PTI. The party was given several ‘last warnings’ by the commission to submit financial details, but they went largely ignored.

An irate ECP bench issued such a warnning recently as well, and subsequently on Monday the party submitted financial documents and details of funds received from abroad, as well as details of party accounts for the past seven years in five sealed volumes.

Party’s counsel insists information not be shared with petitioner or any other third party

In his petition to the ECP, Mr Babar had alleged that almost $3 million was collected from foreign sources and illegally through two offshore companies. He alleged that the money was transferred through the illegal hundi-hawala method.

In April 2015, after scrutinising the PTI’s annual audit reports, the ECP had ordered that the party had failed to disclose the sources and details of foreign funds received, but the PTI challenged the ECP’s jurisdiction to scrutinise its accounts.

In July, the Islamabad High Court rejected the PTI’s plea to prevent the ECP from hearing the petition filed by Akbar S. Babar.

Meanwhile on Monday, the PTI counsel submitting the documents requested the five-member ECP bench, headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) retired Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza, not to share the details with the petitioner.

But the CEC was of the opinion that the details of assets should be published online, as per the ruling of the Lahore High Court, and directed the PTI counsel to get the financial documents verified by the officials concerned.

The bench asked the PTI counsel if the documents and records were the same as those submitted to the Supreme Court, to which counsel Faisal Chaudhry replied that certain additional documents had also been appended.

The next hearing date of the case is set for Oct 16, 2017.

Talking to reporters after the hearing, Mr Babar accused Imran Khan and the PTI of submitting incomplete, false, and fake documents that did not include the money trail of funds received from prohibited sources, through legal and illegal channels.

“As the 688-page PTI document submitted before the Supreme Court, 629 pages are Excel sheets of individuals listed as donors of the PTI in the US, but the actual evidence of donors is available on the US Department of Justice website, which lists foreign nationals and companies that illegally donated money to the PTI,” he said.

“But the party failed to submit even a single bank statement of several PTI bank accounts as evidence, because the bank statements would reveal tonnes of unaccounted money concealed from the ECP that was mostly siphoned off.”

Faisal Chaudhry, who represented the PTI, said the record submitted to the ECP contained details of funding collected from all over the world.

When asked why the party had decided to submit the records now, after such a significant delay, he said: “We have submitted the record in the wake of the Sept 9 decision of the Islamabad High Court, which has also directed the ECP not to forward the record to any third party — as it is confidential and privileged information”.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2017