Islamabad: An accountability court on Tuesday acquitted Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) co-chairman and former president Asif Ali Zardari in two cases involving charges of receiving kickbacks from two Swiss firms.
The corruption cases were initiated by the National Accountability Bureau in 1997 during the second government of current and third-term Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Zardari was charged with obtaining commissions on pre-shipment cargo inspection contracts awarded to SSG and Cotectna during the 1993-96 government of his spouse, late prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto was also an accused in the cases but her name was removed after her assassination in 2007. Another accused, former Central Board of Revenue Chairman A.R Siddiqui, was acquitted for lack of evidence.
The cases had remained shelved while Zardari was president and were reopened after his five-year presidential term expired in 2013,
The accountability court, based in Rawalpindi near here, said the NAB was unable to provide solid evidence and the documentation presented in court was incomplete and in the form of photocopies instead of originals.
Speaking to media, the former president’s counsel, Farooq H. Naek, said his client had been falsely implicated in “politically motivated” cases.
The counsel said there was no documentation implicating his client, adding that Zardari had to spend eight years in jail while his wife was forced into exile.
Naek termed the acquittal verdict a “victory of justice, truth and the constitution.”
The former president is currently living in the Gulf while his son and PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is running the party affairs in the country.
