Rs360m paid to digBhutto family’s accounts
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January 12, 2021
ISLAMABAD: Not only Broadsheet, National Accountability Bureau also quietly paid a sum of $2.25 million (Rs360 million) to yet another asset recovery firm that was hired to dig out details of late Benazir Bhutto, her spouse Asif Ali Zardari and others after NAB prematurely terminated contract with it. In 2000, when M/S Broadsheet LLC was hired to go after 200 target individuals, M/S International Assets Recovery (IAR) was contracted to look for the fortune of the Bhutto family that, NAB suspected, was stashed in different secret jurisdictions of the world. However, NAB broke with both the firms in 2003 without following due process of termination that resulted in efforts to pre-empt litigation through settlement agreements. While NAB entered into a settlement of $1.5 million for Broadsheet with aperson who wasn’t legally authorised to negotiate a truce, a separate $2.25 million was paid to IAR under a settlement agreement which NAB never disclosed. The fact became known only when Sir Anthony Evans, the judge in the Broadsheet arbitration case, made this disclosure part of the record. “In addition to US$1,500,000 paid to or to order of Mr. James under the Settlement Agreement [with Broadsheet], NAB paid US$2,250,000 in settlement of the claims by IAR, also in about 2008,” his verdict reads.