Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested on Tuesday from the Islamabad High Court premises, where he had arrived for the hearing of two cases. Pakistani daily Dawn reported that Akbar Nasir Khan, inspector general police of Islamabad, said Imran Khan was arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case. In the case, Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, have been accused of receiving "billions of rupees from a real estate firm for legalising a laundered amount of 5,000 crore Pakistani rupee."
Media reports on Wednesday suggested that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party will challenge Khan's arrest in Pakistan's Supreme Court.
What is the Al-Qadir Trust case?
The matter surfaced in 2018 after the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) agreed to settle a dispute with Malik Riaz for 190 million pounds. The NCA said that Riaz did bribery and corruption.
Earlier that same year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had accepted settlement of Pak Rs 460 billion by Riaz's real estate firm Bahria Town after it was found to have illegaly acquired thousand of acres of land on the outskirts of Karachi.
After the NCA verdict, Riaz tweeted that the amount will go to the Supreme Court. The money was transferred to the court's account but the Pakistan Government had earlier said that the money should directly come to its account.
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Later, Pakistan's special assistant to the prime minister (SAPM) on Accountability Mirza Shahzad Akbar said, "Is the Supreme Court not part of the government? So if the money goes to the apex court, it means that the money comes to the state."
The questions around the origins of the money remained unanswered. However, there were suspicions that Riaz's company was involved in money laundering.
Now, according to Dawn, Imran Khan, along with his wife Bushra Bibi and other PTI leaders, are facing a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) inquiry for "accepting 500 crore Pakistani rupee and hundreds of canals (of land) from Bahria Town (an Islamabad-based real estate company) in exchange for protecting the firm in a money laundering case."
The firm belonged to Malik Riaz.
It also said that the land was given to the accused in the form of a "donation" to a non-profit organisation, Al-Qadir Trust, to set up a university. Notably, the organisation had only two trustees, Imran and Bushra Bibi.
The allegations state that the settlement between Riaz and the PTI government caused a loss of 19 crore pounds to the national exchequer.
In June 2022, audio of an alleged telephone conversation between Riaz and his daughter leaked where they were heard about the supposed demands of Farah Khan, aka Gogi, against some favours for the previous government of Imran Khan. Gogi is a friend of Bushra Bibi. Dawn reported that the woman (believed to be Riaz's daughter) told the man that Gogi had told her that the former first lady had asked her not to accept a three-karat diamond ring and demanded a five-karat one.
Riaz later denied his role in political matters and attributed the clip as "fabricated".
Last year, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) asked Riaz and several others to appear before it on December 1. NAB also sent notices to 21 members of Khan's cabinet. These included Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Murad Saeed, Pervez Khattak, Shafqat Mahmood, Shireen Mazari, Ali Haider Zaidi, Hammad Azhar and Zulfi Bukhari.
NAB said that it was necessary for Khan to present himself and become a part of the investigation. It was NAB that arrested Khan on Tuesday.
