Asif Ali Zardari's 60 million dollars

[S_O_C_O_M]

Asif Ali Zardari's 60 million dollars​

by Elf Habib
November 4, 2012

The saga to scour, recover and relocate the $ 60 million allegedly stashed in Swiss vaults and believed in some circles to belong to President Asif Zardari and his associates reflects a rare epic of heroism, hope, obsession and persistence by our ostentatiously piety-puffed, patriotic party leaders, preaching potentates, virtue-vending legalists, law enforcing aces, media mavens and the stellar judicial pantheon. The epic that has already run over 16 years resonate a rare pride, passion and fixation for a blustering expedition of battering Benazir Bhutto — the most popular political icon — and incarcerating and torturing her husband to try and extract the booty and ensure his nemesis. Ms Bhutto is now, at least physically, no longer with us so Mr Zardari alone has to brace the bayonets being brandished to make him disgorge the chest. These bayonets bedevilled about two decades of our politics and election campaigns, swallowed two stints of the Pakistan People's Party's (PPP) government and two parliaments in the process in 1990 and 1996. They plagued the PPP stints almost like an albatross but were reloaded with a far mightier thrust of the judicial mace with the emergence of its present tenure and have already trampled its third premier for shielding Mr Zardari, the main quarry allegedly controlling the lost coffers. This treasure hunt has become the main fulcrum for the forces that resent and revile his rise, rule and policies under various pretexts. The campaign gained a boisterous traction with his elevation as president, and particularly after Mian Nawaz Sharif nixed him to propagate his panacea for an immediate re-election to ensure his own rule as a hyper-honest, efficient and miraculous saviour. The Supreme Court, at least apparently, has now spearheaded this treasure hunt and the letter that it ordered to be written to the Swiss authorities for the recondite hoard is now at last being transmitted.

The twist troubling its text and tenor and the suspense and speculation spawned by it have now subsided and the cache seems merely a few paces away from its pursuers. One earnestly hopes that the treasure is still there intact and has not already been rifled and expended by the impugned depositors. Its disappearance, inevitably, would entail another legalistic maze. Yet the hunters fired by their in-suppressible zeal for these special 'zillions' would be certainly embarking on the next episode of the epic to retrace its pilferage and prompt its repatriation by the earliest available couriers. Such exciting moments of élan, elation and expectation evidently inspire an evaluation or balance sheet comparing the real worth, relevance and potential of this treasure to relieve our suffering to the tensions, travails, time, energy and resources invested in the marathon chase for its retrieval. Unfortunately, the hype and harangue heralding it as a titanic tranche of the national wealth to wipe out all our miseries, appears a ridiculously hollow assumption being traded more as an emotive ploy to pillory a political opponent than for its actual utility, scope and significance. The amount of US$ 60 million merely makes about five billion rupees in the local currency. It is ridiculously six hundred times less than the present estimates of the annual federal budget and cannot even cover the costs of the court proceedings and the propaganda carried out for this noble venture, particularly if the remuneration of the lawyers and their staff are included in the computation. The stellar court, it may be remembered, has already accorded over four years of its august wisdom, verve and attention to it. The case following a verdict by all the 17 majestic lords was entrusted to seven and five-member benches for implementation. The input merely in financial terms thus has been quite staggering.

Compared to some other scams, it is less than half of the Rs 12 billion burnt in the Sasti Roti (subsidized bread) ovens, losses incurred in starting, shelving and restarting the Ring Road and metro projects and a quarter of the Rs 22 billion ladled out for laptops. It miserably fails to maintain even a semblance of the Punjab chief minister's waste disposal arrangements in 16 out of 151 union councils in Lahore as the annual expenditure of the Turkish firm tackling this task has already surpassed Rs seven billion. The amount, interestingly, is no less than the Rs six billion case against Mian Nawaz Sharif, still being mysteriously stalled in various courts. It represents barely peanuts for purchasing any of our super national assets like the F-16, Thunder jets and kindred war-craft that have beguiled our entire ideology and existence.

A little more sense and seriousness in ferreting out the funds filched from the national exchequer in contrast would show that sums that are far more stupendous could be recovered from the sources found right within our territorial boundaries without making a global gig of our wondrous wizardry for the Swiss booty. The assets misappropriated merely in the defence housing schemes exceed trillions as proceedings for a 62 billion scam implicating just one Defence Housing Authority are said to be pending with the National Accountability Bureau. The whopping US$92 million deal in the purchase of Chinese railway engines and coaches; billions of rupees unaccounted for in the oil and gas manipulations and the Mollah made by General (Retired) Parvez Musharraf similarly are tips of the mountains raised around us. Even some media moguls are reported to have evaded more than this in taxes and payment for the plazas constructed contravening the contracts for land acquired for offices. Yet this comparatively more conveniently recoverable bonanza amassed around us has escaped the splash and the sorties made for the Swiss trove, which in comparison constitutes a far more diminutive, difficult, diffuse, debilitating and uncertain target. Some lofty moralists however, may argue that corruption ought to be combated irrespective of its quantity and commercial significance but even they would concede that the crusade must also be meticulously meaningful, non-selective and across the board. Its strategy, most sensibly, must also begin by first trawling the easily accessible, facile and immediate surroundings and then venturing gradually to remote, more intricate and slippery sites like Switzerland.

Yet our paroxysm for an ostentatiously obtuse, dramatic and evidently futile fixation for about two decades proves an incurably pernicious and pervasive syndrome of striving and squandering our energies, efforts and resources on highly egoistic, illogical and inaccessible ideals, ambitions and pursuits while focusing far little on relatively simpler, more sensible, straightforward, easily accessible and fruitful strategies and solutions. The crusade in any pragmatic non-partisan analysis actually seems to relegate the retrieval of the resources to the obsession with festering political feuds. This odyssey of pompous and Quixotic crusades would certainly be quite amazing and bewildering even for our children. With the love, laughter and levity lighting their eyes and expressions, they would be pressing us to explain how we dragged on for decades digging out Rupees six billion in Zurich and leaving the trillions lying just around us.

Asif Ali Zardari's 60 million dollars :: Weekly Blitz

 

[snakeeagle]

4 god sake hake his account and transfer money to national bank

 

[A.Rafay]

Really his amount is so less compared to nawaz and shahbazs Corruption, They had various Scandals and wasting money like hell, Zardari didnt did corruption he just killed his wife Easy money!!!

 

[KingMamba]

All politicians should have their accounts hacked and money returned to central bank of Pakistan.