There are layers of irony if one considers how the Broadsheet LLC scandal has panned out, costing the exchequer upwards of $21.5 million. For one, this is a purely a case of unchecked and arrogant abuse of power and the only institution that can prosecute those responsible is the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which itself shares the primary blame for the entire fiasco. Secondly, that the fine is 80 percent of the possible amount that could have been recovered by Broadsheet LLC from Nawaz Sharif (not a single Dollar was actually recovered), means that not only did the company not deliver on what it had promised, it got paid to do absolutely nothing, while the whole exercise, whose purpose was to ‘bring Pakistan’s looted wealth back to the country’, was a complete and utter failure. Musharraf and his juniors who took turns at running NAB had no intention of genuinely going after corrupt politicians to make recoveries, as whoever joined the King’s party in those days was given a clean chit and had his name removed from the list of over 200 individuals that were to be pursued. Later, the figures central to the accountability drive, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were let off the hook through an NRO and allowed to return to the country as Musharraf neared his sell-by date.
Broadsheet LLC’s CEO Kaveh Moussavi, who has reemerged onto the scene and is making startling revelations while appearing on various prime time talk shows, is a dubious character who should not have been trusted in the first place, yet, a contract skewed heavily in his favour was signed by the Musharraf regime, evidently without giving the matter much thought. According to documents that have surfaced recently, the PTI was about to make the same mistake and hire Broadsheet LLC for its pursuit of Nawaz Sharif’s assets and it was only when the same documents alleged that members of the government’s negotiation team asked for kickbacks to finalise the fresh contract that it was abandoned. The PTI, instead of fixing blame on those who are genuinely responsible for this mess that has cost the taxpayer millions of dollars, terms the fine as a “cost” of “NRO deals” offered to the Sharif family, even though it has so far been unable to recover any of those alleged ‘billions’ stashed abroad in its two and half years in office. It is shameful how a decades-old practice of sham accountability for the purpose of political victimization continues unabated, causing financial damage and embarrassment to the country.
