Former Prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan was arrested on Tuesday on the suspicion of corruption by an anti-graft agency. Government officials said that Khan and his wife accepted land worth millions of dollars through a charity trust as a bribe from a real estate tycoon through a charitable trust.
Trust name is AL-QADIR TRUST. Bushra Watto, Amir Khan’s third wife, and Amir Khan founded the non-governmental Al-Qadir Trust in 2018 while he was still in office. The trust currently manages a university outside of Islamabad that is dedicated to spirituality and Islamic teachings.
WHAT IS THE CASE OF CORRUPTION?
At a news conference on Tuesday, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the trust was a cover for Khan to collect valuable land as a bribe from real estate developer Malik Riaz Hussain, one of Pakistan’s wealthiest and most influential businesspeople.
Last year, Hussain was called by the anti-graft organization that later arrested Khan to provide information on the land granted to the trust.
The minister said that the trust owns another sizable plot of property in Islamabad next to Khan’s hilltop residence that is worth around 60 acres and is valued at seven billion Pakistani rupees ($24.7 million).
The university’s designated location is a 60-acre plot in the Jhelum district of Punjab province, although not much has been constructed there.
Marriyum Aurangzeb, the minister of information, questioned the donations made for the institution’s activities while it was still under construction.
According to a statement she released late on Tuesday night, “the trust received 180 million rupees ($635,144.67) for operational expenses, but records showed only 8.52 million rupees” on the books.
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