A former Pakistani minister has claimed that he had issued orders to arrest Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in a money laundering case during the tenure of Benazir Bhutto’s government but she had blocked the move.“When Shaukat Aziz was working with Citibank, he was involved in a money laundering case. After investigation I issued directives to arrest him but Benazir stopped it saying that Aziz was an American citizen and his arrest would create problems,” retired general Naraullah Babar, who was interior minister in Benazir’s government, alleged during a book launch at New York on Monday.Pakistan’s politicians have always been targets of accountability panels, and it is now time that military generals were also held accountable, newspaper Daily Times quoted him as saying at the launch of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s biography, Gaddar Koun (Who is the Traitor?). Then in an apparent reference to the spate of court cases instituted against Benazir Bhutto and her spouse, Asif Ali Zardari, Babar added, “President General Pervez Musharraf will come to know about the peoples’ problems only when he leaves the presidency.”Aziz, a former vice-president of Citibank, was invited to be finance minister by Musharraf after he took over following a military coup in 1999 to oust prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Aziz has since emerged as the president’s confidant and was made prime minister in 2004 after the removal of Zafarullah Khan Jamali.The combined opposition in the Federal Assembly, including Benazir’s Pakistan Peoples Party, is planning to move a motion of no confidence against Aziz and his government on Wednesday, having listed various failures and “corrupt” deals of his government.
