The details of the Broadsheet LLP case are a complete mess that Pakistan has been embroiled in for a long time. There is a penalty of millions of dollars hanging over the State’s head, and as it scrambles to find out who was to blame, more court judgments get decided against Pakistan’s favour and attack the accounts of our embassies upon our delay of payment.
In this case, Broadsheet LLP was hired by NAB during Musharraf’s regime to trace the hidden assets of 200 Pakistanis. Complications led to the termination of services and the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) awarded a penalty of millions of dollars to the anti-corruption watchdog. While the current government has been pursuing this case to see who to castigate the blame on, the UK high court decided to debit $28.7m from the accounts of the Pakistan High Commission in London over non-payment of the penalty.
There were clearly several fatal mistakes made in the handling of this case, and the government should investigate where it went wrong, in order to ensure more transparency and competence in the future. Yet it also needs to deal with this issue for once and all, before further non-payment damages our High Commission. The case has been lost and a sitting government of Pakistan had agreed to not pursue it and pay—the current government cannot just take back the word of previous government heads. The international politics of a country do not matter to international arbitration courts, when services of foreign firms are sought. The government needs to put this matter to rest, while at the same time initiating inquiries and pushing reforms to ensure that such an episode does not happen again.
https://nation.com.pk/03-Jan-2021/a-complete-mess
A Complete Mess: edit in The Nation, Jan 3, 2021
The details of the Broadsheet LLP case are a complete mess that Pakistan has been embroiled in for a long time. There is a penalty of millions of dollars hanging over the State’s head, and as it scrambles to find out who was to blame, more court judgments get decided against Pakistan’s favour and attack the accounts of our embassies upon our delay of payment.
In this case, Broadsheet LLP was hired by NAB during Musharraf’s regime to trace the hidden assets of 200 Pakistanis. Complications led to the termination of services and the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) awarded a penalty of millions of dollars to the anti-corruption watchdog. While the current government has been pursuing this case to see who to castigate the blame on, the UK high court decided to debit $28.7m from the accounts of the Pakistan High Commission in London over non-payment of the penalty.
There were clearly several fatal mistakes made in the handling of this case, and the government should investigate where it went wrong, in order to ensure more transparency and competence in the future. Yet it also needs to deal with this issue for once and all, before further non-payment damages our High Commission. The case has been lost and a sitting government of Pakistan had agreed to not pursue it and pay—the current government cannot just take back the word of previous government heads. The international politics of a country do not matter to international arbitration courts, when services of foreign firms are sought. The government needs to put this matter to rest, while at the same time initiating inquiries and pushing reforms to ensure that such an episode does not happen again.
https://nation.com.pk/03-Jan-2021/a-complete-mess
Published in Pak Media comment and Pakistan