Broadsheet LLC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kaveh Moussavi has said that no one in Pervez Musharraf regime and the present one is interested in exposing the plunderers who laundered money and amassed their wealth abroad.

The firm was hired during the Pervez Musharraf era to find out the ill gotten money of Pakistan politicians and others in the year 2000 but the National Accountability Bureau terminated the contract in 2003.

Talking to BBC Urdu, Moussavi claimed that he was offered his services by the present government in tracing the assets of Pakistani politicians abroad. However, a government representative wanted a “share” for him and the talks stalled.

Replying to a questions, he said he had identified a bank account in Britain having one billion dollars, but the Pakistan government did not show any interest in tracing it.

He said the government knows whom the suspicious account belonged to. Asked whose account it was, Mousavi said, “Ask the Pakistani government, they know.”

Interestingly, Prime Minister Imran Khan had on January 13 mentioned in his address that the Broadsheet has disclosed that a Pakistani political figure had transferred the amount to the UK, but it did not reveal the name of the account holder.

According to Mousavi, if an agreement is reached with the government, they can “hand over the evidence collected against the Sharif family to the Pakistani government.”

He said during Musharraf era, an agreement was reached with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Pakistani government and he was handed over a list of 200 people, including Nawaz Sharfi, Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari.

Moussavi claimed that Broadsheet had got evidence of Nawaz Sharif and his close aides bank accounts, many of which had been frozen.

“You know the story of the necklace which was purchased in Geneva, you might also know the story of the credit card used in Geneva but when Panama scandal came into limelight, we got to know what we needed to know.”

He said that before he could start the process of freezing the identified bank accounts, NAB terminated the contract.

Moussavi said NAB had claimed that the Broadsheet had failed to accomplish its task. But, in reality we had traced and provided evidence to NAB of several foreign bank accounts having millions of dollars. “We had asked them to move the relevant governments to recover the money.”

He mentioned that Broadsheet had traced a bank account belonging to former interior minister Aftab Sherpao in New Jersey and had asked NAB to write to authorities in the US so that the money could be brought back.

He alleged that NAB wrote to the authorities, without informing the company, and the account was restored. The money was then withdrawn and Sherpao was made interior minister.

Moussavi alleged that NAB also leaked classified information to the targets and when the company went after him, it was found out that he had already withdrawn the money from the account and closed.

He said that one Anjum Dar approached him in 2012 and identified himself as Nawaz Sharif’s nephew. He said he wanted to talk about the information we have against the Sharif family.”

Moussavi alleged that during the meeting, the man offered $25 million for not disclosing information and evidence regarding the Sharif family’s assets, which he turned down.

When asked how the Sharif family came to know about the evidence while the information was only shared with NAB, he again alleged that someone from within the NAB must have provided the information to them.

Moussavi said he informed the Pakistani government in 2018 during the talks to reduce the compensation amount to continue the job. However, a few people involved wanted their “share.”

Moussavi said that during a meeting in 2019, he told the representatives of the Pakistani government about a bank amount having $1 billion. However, one of the representatives, he said, asked him how much “commission” he would get out of the deal.

When asked the name of the representative, he denied that he was Shahzad Akbar.

About Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said he knew him, “he’s an honest man and seemed to be serious about it as well.

He said he is not very optimistic after recent experience with the people in his government.

He said he would only agree to work with the Pakistani government unless the “corrupt within the NAB have been expelled.”

The story was filed by the News Desk. The Desk can be reached at info@thecorrespondent.com.pk.

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