Pakistan: 4 PTI employees identified in foreign funding probe, says agency

Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has identified four employees of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) secretariat, whose personal and salary accounts were used to receive foreign funding.

News International newspaper reported that the agency said funds were received in the bank accounts of Muhammad Arshad, Tahir Iqbal, Muhammad Rafique, and Nauman Afzal.

In the statements, the PTI employees that they used to give the money received in their accounts to the Imran Khan party's finance manager, as per the report.

They said they would give signed blank cheques to the finance manager. According to the publication, the FIA came to know during the investigation that besides other accounts, foreign funding was also received in employees' salary accounts.

FIA has earlier constituted a six-member team to probe into PTI prohibited funding case.

This investigation came days after the three-member Election Commission of Pakistan bench in a unanimous verdict ruled that the PTI received prohibited funding in the case pending since 2014, ARY News reported.

On August 4, the Pakistan government decided to file a disqualification reference against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan after the verdict of the prohibited funding case and the federal cabinet accepted the recommendation.

Pakistan's Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said in her press conference that the PTI used overall 16 bank accounts that were not found on the records. She alleged that PTI used donations to the charity as party funds and an inquiry will be conducted into it.

"For the first time in Pakistan, a political party is declared a foreign-funded party. The accounts of the PTI secretariat employees were used for foreign funding," she added.

Aurangzeb said that PTI was declared a 'foreign-funded party' in light of the ECP verdict, according to ARY News.

The Commission found that the donations were taken from 34 countries in fundraising. These included the US and Australia, Geo News reported.

The ECP also said that the PTI had taken funds from an American businessman.

In its verdict, the ECP observed the 'unknown accounts' and said that hiding accounts are a "violation of the Constitution".

Moreover, it found that PTI Chairman Imran Khan submitted a false Nomination Form I.

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The ECP decided to issue a show-cause notice to the PTI to explain why the Commission should not seize the funds it received.

According to the publication, the ECP had released the cause list for the case. The cause list showed that the verdict would be announced by a three-member bench led by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, who arrived early in the morning at the office.

• Pakistan