Dawood Ibrahim
SENIOR MEMBER
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- May 25, 2016
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Imagine the Saudi royal family in the dock for corruption by their own police? Or think of the despotic Muslim rulers in the Middle-East, South Asia or the Far-East being cross-examined by their own law enforcement personnel? Who dare take on these formidable authoritarian figures? Who can point an accusing finger at their financial malfeasance? Unless of course, that person has a death wish and wants to face a firing squad or get his head chopped off or worse still disappear from the face of the earth along with his whole family! Notice how Muslim leaders pride in making a public show of being very religious. They model themselves as Allah’s vice-regents, pretending to be pious and pure. But are they really?
The scandalous tales of these Islamic leaders’ corruption from Indonesia, Malaysia, Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Africa can fill an encyclopedia of financial and moral turpitude. Seen to be above the law, the corrupt rulers are exempt from accountability. They enjoy full immunity and are answerable to none.
Israel is not a country to be admired. It is an illegitimate occupier of Palestinian territories including Jerusalem. Nor is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a man to extol. But applaud we must the laws of that land. While Israel deserves to be denounced for infringing into Palestinian-held West Bank by constructing Jewish settlements, credit must be given where it is due. The country has the courage of its convictions by grilling its prime minister without fear or favour. In Israel, none is above the law! It has zero tolerance for corruption. Recently, the Israeli Attorney General decided there was enough evidence for a criminal investigation against the sitting prime minister who along with his wife illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands and champagne from a Hollywood billionaire. He ordered the police to question the prime minister at his official residence. The interrogation lasted for three hours. “The prime minister had a sugar daddy for expensive products; that is the definition of corruption,” Yachimovich, a former leader of the Labor party, said. Three days later, the police were again at the PM’s door for a 5-hour inquisition that went late into the night.
Stop! Think Pakistan. If we were to count the number of expensive gifts that our prime ministers, past and present, received, they would be doing jail time and banned for life to hold public office again. Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari, Yusuf Raza Gillani, Pervaiz Ashraf, Nawaz Sharif have held the highest offices despite being accused of corruption. Thanks to the National Reconciliation Ordinance and a pliant judiciary, they keep turning up like bad pennies. Asif Zardari, the ‘comeback kid,’ could well be the next prime minister in 2018. Four-time Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu too is a comeback kid, a cool cat with seven lives! “Dogged for decades by scandals ranging from the funding of family trips to enormous ice cream bills,” writes the New York Times, he is again under scrutiny, “this time over a billion-dollar deal with Germany for the acquisition of three new submarines.”
Stop! Think Pakistan. Remember the scandal surrounding Benazir Bhutto and First Gentleman Asif Zardari regarding the three Agosta 90B submarines built by the French navy. It was the spring of 1997, when I and two other Islamabad-based Pakistani journalists were invited to visit the French dockyard in Cherbourg, Normandy. During an extensive briefing session by the French navy and defence ministry officials, our focus was on the alleged kickbacks received by Benazir and Zardari from the French. The officials vehemently denied giving any kickbacks.We returned home without any concrete evidence about the alleged commissions. Enter the Swedes, who too wanted Islamabad to buy their four subs for the price of three which Pakistan was paying the French. When their offer was spurned, they supposedly wrote to the then President Farooq Leghari alleging that kickbacks worth US $200 million from the Frenchhad been pocketed by the highest in the land. How they knew, beats me. While the Pakistani press doggedly followed the corruption stories in circulation then, eventually the scandal petered out adding to the withering dead heap of investigative stories already gone cold. While Israeli prime ministers are not ‘obligated to step down while under investigation, unless they are charged with a crime,’ Israel’s law neither forgets nor forgives wrongdoing. Today, Netanyahu is in the dock. His accuser, who requested the High Court of Justice to investigate prime minister’s alleged “shady dealings with a German shipbuilding company” has received death threats. He’s currently under police protections.
Stop! Think Pakistan. Imagine if someone (other than Imran Khan) had the courage to provide Pakistan’s apex court with proof against a sitting prime minister, instead of being protected, he’d be dead meat!
Netanyahu tried to negotiate a good press in return for benefits: media
Last February, Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert became the first Israeli prime minister to go to jail. Convicted of taking bribes while he was mayor of Jerusalem, he’s still serving his 19-month prison term. Before starting his imprisonment, he said:“As prime minister I was entrusted with Israel’s security, and now I am the one who is about to sit behind bars. You may well imagine how this transformation is painful and strange to me,” said the prisoner number 9032478! The same year 2007, when the Israeli press broke the corruption stories of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli President Katsav was disgraced and sentenced to 7-year imprisonment for “raping an aide when he was cabinet minister in the late 1990s and sexually molesting female employees during his 2000-2007 term as president.” Last month he walked free after his term was cut down to five years.The then Justice Minister Haim Ramon too was convicted in March 2007 for kissing a female soldier against her will and sent to jail.
The above are teachable moments for Pakistan’s jurists to grasp.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 15th, 2017.
@war&peace @PakSword @Farah Sohail @Isotope
The scandalous tales of these Islamic leaders’ corruption from Indonesia, Malaysia, Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Africa can fill an encyclopedia of financial and moral turpitude. Seen to be above the law, the corrupt rulers are exempt from accountability. They enjoy full immunity and are answerable to none.
Israel is not a country to be admired. It is an illegitimate occupier of Palestinian territories including Jerusalem. Nor is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a man to extol. But applaud we must the laws of that land. While Israel deserves to be denounced for infringing into Palestinian-held West Bank by constructing Jewish settlements, credit must be given where it is due. The country has the courage of its convictions by grilling its prime minister without fear or favour. In Israel, none is above the law! It has zero tolerance for corruption. Recently, the Israeli Attorney General decided there was enough evidence for a criminal investigation against the sitting prime minister who along with his wife illicitly accepted cigars worth hundreds of thousands and champagne from a Hollywood billionaire. He ordered the police to question the prime minister at his official residence. The interrogation lasted for three hours. “The prime minister had a sugar daddy for expensive products; that is the definition of corruption,” Yachimovich, a former leader of the Labor party, said. Three days later, the police were again at the PM’s door for a 5-hour inquisition that went late into the night.
Stop! Think Pakistan. If we were to count the number of expensive gifts that our prime ministers, past and present, received, they would be doing jail time and banned for life to hold public office again. Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari, Yusuf Raza Gillani, Pervaiz Ashraf, Nawaz Sharif have held the highest offices despite being accused of corruption. Thanks to the National Reconciliation Ordinance and a pliant judiciary, they keep turning up like bad pennies. Asif Zardari, the ‘comeback kid,’ could well be the next prime minister in 2018. Four-time Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu too is a comeback kid, a cool cat with seven lives! “Dogged for decades by scandals ranging from the funding of family trips to enormous ice cream bills,” writes the New York Times, he is again under scrutiny, “this time over a billion-dollar deal with Germany for the acquisition of three new submarines.”
Stop! Think Pakistan. Remember the scandal surrounding Benazir Bhutto and First Gentleman Asif Zardari regarding the three Agosta 90B submarines built by the French navy. It was the spring of 1997, when I and two other Islamabad-based Pakistani journalists were invited to visit the French dockyard in Cherbourg, Normandy. During an extensive briefing session by the French navy and defence ministry officials, our focus was on the alleged kickbacks received by Benazir and Zardari from the French. The officials vehemently denied giving any kickbacks.We returned home without any concrete evidence about the alleged commissions. Enter the Swedes, who too wanted Islamabad to buy their four subs for the price of three which Pakistan was paying the French. When their offer was spurned, they supposedly wrote to the then President Farooq Leghari alleging that kickbacks worth US $200 million from the Frenchhad been pocketed by the highest in the land. How they knew, beats me. While the Pakistani press doggedly followed the corruption stories in circulation then, eventually the scandal petered out adding to the withering dead heap of investigative stories already gone cold. While Israeli prime ministers are not ‘obligated to step down while under investigation, unless they are charged with a crime,’ Israel’s law neither forgets nor forgives wrongdoing. Today, Netanyahu is in the dock. His accuser, who requested the High Court of Justice to investigate prime minister’s alleged “shady dealings with a German shipbuilding company” has received death threats. He’s currently under police protections.
Stop! Think Pakistan. Imagine if someone (other than Imran Khan) had the courage to provide Pakistan’s apex court with proof against a sitting prime minister, instead of being protected, he’d be dead meat!
Netanyahu tried to negotiate a good press in return for benefits: media
Last February, Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert became the first Israeli prime minister to go to jail. Convicted of taking bribes while he was mayor of Jerusalem, he’s still serving his 19-month prison term. Before starting his imprisonment, he said:“As prime minister I was entrusted with Israel’s security, and now I am the one who is about to sit behind bars. You may well imagine how this transformation is painful and strange to me,” said the prisoner number 9032478! The same year 2007, when the Israeli press broke the corruption stories of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli President Katsav was disgraced and sentenced to 7-year imprisonment for “raping an aide when he was cabinet minister in the late 1990s and sexually molesting female employees during his 2000-2007 term as president.” Last month he walked free after his term was cut down to five years.The then Justice Minister Haim Ramon too was convicted in March 2007 for kissing a female soldier against her will and sent to jail.
The above are teachable moments for Pakistan’s jurists to grasp.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 15th, 2017.
@war&peace @PakSword @Farah Sohail @Isotope
