ISLAMABAD: Without having gone through a fresh judgment of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, the PPP denied on Monday that a jewellery set seized in the SGS corruption case belongs to the heirs of the late Benazir Bhutto or former president Asif Ali Zardari.

A statement issued by Senator Farhat­ullah Babar, who had served as spokesperson to the late prime minister and the former president, said the jewellery never belonged to Ms Bhutto and there was, therefore, no question of it belonging to her legal heirs or to Mr Zardari.

He said he “had not yet seen the so-called latest ruling of the Swiss tribunal but on the basis of his association with the case from its inception to the end he could make this assertion confidently”.

He recalled that on Sept 19, 2005, Ms Bhutto had appeared before the Swiss investigation magistrate in Geneva and categorically denied having purchased the jewellery or owned the Swiss companies which allegedly owned it or being involved in money laundering. He said the National Accountability Bureau had claimed at that time that a piece of jewellery had been seized from Ms Bhutto’s safe in Geneva. But it was proved before the magistrate that she did not have a safe there and the jewellery had been taken from a jeweller in Geneva.

He said a claim that Jens Schlagl­emilch was an agent of Ms Bhutto had also been proven false by his testimony.

He said it was the same case in which the Supreme Court had not only set aside the conviction awarded by a court in Pakistan but also passed stinging strictures against the trial judge.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014