Islamabad: The government has strongly denied a French newspaper report accusing President Asif Ali Zardari and military authorities of having received millions of dollars in kickbacks from the 1994 sale of three French submarines to Pakistan navy.
A government spokesman said in a statement that the report, which was also reproduced by a local daily, was "actually regurgitation" of an old story.
That story, the statement said, was contradicted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on July 11 this year and he dismissed the kickbacks charge against Zardari as "ridiculous, grotesque and a tale".
The statement said that the purchase of equipment by the armed forces of Pakistan is done through a proper competitive process under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence.
Zardari was neither the president nor the prime minister nor the defence minister when the submarines referred to in the report were purchased.
The then admiral responsible for this purchase was investigated by the Accountability Bureau but no allegation of misdeeds could be established by the investigation authorities against Zardari, the statement said.
Regarding allegation about the killing of three French nationals in Karachi in 2002, the spokesman said that Zardari was in prison in 2002 when the unfortunate incident took place.
"This indicates the motive behind levelling such baseless allegations", the spokesman said and added: "How can a person in prison arrange such high-profile killings?"
Malicious campaign
The allegations of kickbacks and involvement in killing of French nationals against the person of the president "are, therefore, highly unfortunate and seem to be part of malicious campaign launched against the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan," the statement said.
The French daily Liberation claimed it has documents that show that Zardari allegedly received $4.3 million in kickbacks from the sale of three Agosta-90 submarines for 825 million euros.
It claimed the documents were sent to the Pakistani National Accountability Bureau by British authorities in April 2001, which indicated that Zardari received several large payments into his Swiss bank accounts from a Lebanese businessman, who acted as intermediary in 1994 and 1995.
