FOREIGN STAFF
PARIS — Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is suspected of having received millions of dollars in kickbacks from the 1994 sale of three French submarines to the Pakistani Navy, the French daily Liberation reported yesterday.
In addition, investigators believe that the nonpayment of the full amount of the agreed kickbacks may have led to the deaths of 11 French nationals in a 2002 terrorist attack in the city of Karachi.
In the report, Liberation says it acquired documents that allegedly show that Zardari received 4,3m in kickbacks from the sale of three Agosta submarines for 1,237bn.
The documents were sent to the Pakistani National Accountability Bureau by British authorities in April 2001 and indicate that Zardari received several large payments into his Swiss bank accounts from a Lebanese businessman, Abdulrahman el-Assir, in 1994 and 1995.
According to a former executive of the French naval defence company DCN, French authorities chose el-Assir to act as intermediary. He allegedly deposited a total of 1,3m in Zardari’s bank accounts between August 15 and 30 1994, one month before the submarine contract was signed, and then 1,2m and 1,8m one year later.
According to DCN employees who testified in the terror attack investigation, the kickbacks to Pakistan in the deal totalled 10% of the purchase amount, with 6%, or 49,5m , going to the military and 4%, or 36m, being funnelled to political circles.
In 2001, former Pakistani Navy chief-of-staff Mansour Ul-Haq was arrested for his part in the deal and forced to repay 7m , the daily says.
Legal proceedings against Zardari were dropped in April last year, several months before he was elected president. However, the husband of the assassinated former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto was imprisoned from 1997 to 2004 on unrelated corruption charges .
The Pakistani president is one of his country’s richest men, with a net worth estimated at 1,8bn. The ongoing investigation in Paris into the May 8 2002, terrorist attack that killed 11 DCN employees in Karachi, may shed new light on the submarine purchase and his part in it.
The victims were in Karachi to complete work on the three submarines. According to French media, the magistrate looking into the bombing has rejected the theory that it was the work of al-Qaeda.
He is now considering the possibility it was carried out by Pakistanis, either because only 85% of the agreed kickbacks were paid or because of negotiations carried out by French authorities to sell submarines to India, Pakistan’s enemy.