ISLAMABAD: The Rehbar Committee is scheduled to protest in front of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) against the foreign funding case.
The Rehbar Committee took the decision of holding the protest against the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI)’s foreign funding case with a demand to conduct the proceedings by the ECL on a daily basis.
On 7th November, the PTI filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to challenge the ECP’s decision to reject its applications against an audit of the party’s foreign funding.
Read more: IHC orders to transfer ECP members case to parliament
The PTI requested the court to restrain the scrutiny committee formed by the election commission from probing the party’s foreign funding.
On 1st October, the PTI’s verdict was reserved by the ECP on the ruling party’s applications after listening to the arguments of the various parties to the case.
It is to be mentioned here that the hearing was resumed after 18 months.
The bench had observed that the scrutiny committee had found details of 23 accounts held by the PTI.
The case was filed on 14th November 2014 by Akbar S. Babar, after he developed differences with the PTI chief over internal corruption and abuse of laws governing political funding.
Also read: ECP reserves verdict on four applications in PTI foreign funding case
The petitioner alleged that nearly $3 million in illegal foreign funds were collected through two offshore companies, registered under Imran Khan’s signature.
He also alleged that the foreign accounts used to collect funds were concealed from the annual audit reports submitted to the ECP.
On 1st April 2015, after scrutinising PTI’s annual audit reports, the ECP ordered that the party had failed to disclose the sources and details of foreign funds received.
Also read; PTI’s four petitions against foreign funding case rejected
But instead of submitting the accounts, the PTI challenged the ECP’s jurisdiction to scrutinise its accounts.
On 8th October 2015, a five-member bench of the ECP passed a detailed order saying that only the ECP was the right constitutional forum to scrutinise accounts of political parties.
On 26th November 2015, the PTI challenged the ECP order before the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which finally remanded the case back to the ECP on 15th February 2017.
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The last PTI summoned petition in the IHC challenging formation of the ECP scrutiny committee to audit PTI foreign funding and the party’s membership of Babar was dismissed by a single IHC bench on 24th July 2019.
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