ISLAMABAD: As the Islamabad High Court (IHC) takes up the PTI foreign funding case today (Tuesday), the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) scrutiny committee has yet to finalise the examination of PTI’s bank statements and submit its findings to the commission.

The committee was formed on March 27 this year to examine the PTI’s foreign funding accounts and submit its findings within a month. The committee met for the first time on April 3, but after the PTI was uncooperative in submitting its accounts and bank statements, its timeframe was extended by another two months to conclude on July 3.

The PTI continued to stall the submission of its accounts sought by the committee for the 2009 to 2013 period despite the extension. Between April and the end of June, the committee met 19 times with little progress, as the PTI continued to delay proceedings by refusing to submit the accounts sought by the committee.

The ECP then asked the State Bank to produce the accounts under its constitutional powers. According the State Bank directed all the scheduled banks of Pakistan to submit the PTI’s accounts to the ECP by July 16.

Scrutiny committee yet to finalise examination of PTI accounts, submit findings to ECP

Sources within the ECP have confirmed that all PTI bank statements for the 2009 to 2013 period have been with the commission since the middle of July. However, the scrutiny committee, which is led by the director general law and two auditors from the defence establishment, has yet to examine and finalise its findings.

Since the foreign funding case was filed in November 2014, the PTI has challenged the ECP’s jurisdiction to scrutinise its accounts, and the membership of petitioner Akbar S. Babar.

The ECP and subsequently the IHC have passed more than one judgement validating the ECP’s jurisdiction and the petitioner’s PTI membership.

The last PTI writ petition, filed in the IHC, challenged the formation of the ECP scrutiny committee to audit the party’s foreign funding as well as the membership of Akbar S. Babar and was dismissed by a single bench on July 24.

All previous PTI attempts to challenge the ECP’s jurisdiction and the petitioner’s membership have failed, and the matter was resolved in the petitioner’s favour in the ECP’s May 8, 2017 verdict and the IHC’s July 24 verdict.

However, contrary to its stated public position of not challenging the ECP’s right to scrutinise its accounts, the party has once again challenged the single bench verdict by filing its fifth writ petition, this time before a division bench, which is scheduled to be heard on Sept 18.

The foreign funding case was first filed in November 2014, by founding PTI member and former central vice president Akbar S. Babar after he developed differences with the party chairman Imran Khan over alleged corruption and other illegalities in party funding.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2018