Islamabad [Pakistan], May 20 (ANI): Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s financial expert has accepted before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that the party had revealed to the commission only the bank branches where its accounts were operated and not the total number of accounts in their annual reports.
The PTI continued its final technical arguments before a three-member ECP bench, headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, The News International reported.
The PTI financial expert noted that 11 bank accounts disowned by the party on March 15, this year, which the party owned all along the four years the scrutiny committee scrutinised the accounts, were in fact provincial accounts where money from the central accounts was transferred to run the party affairs in the respective provinces.
The expert further explained that all funds, received from abroad, were deposited in the declared accounts, as all the details are kept in the central finance section.
It is to be noted that the 11 PTI accounts disowned by it were detected in a written reply submitted before the ECP on March 15, 2012. According to page 92 of the ECP Scrutiny Committee Report, the PTI had revealed only two bank accounts each in the annual audit reports for fiscal years 2008-12 and four for the year 2013, The News International reported.
The foreign funding case is pending since November 14, 2014, and it was filed by PTI founding member Akbar S Babar who had alleged that there are some financial irregularities in the PTI’s funding from Pakistan and abroad.
However, he also asked the ECP to probe into the funds of all political parties under the law. PTI had filed a petition in Islamabad High Court against the alleged bias of the ECP in the prohibited funding case. (ANI)