Days after Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were sentenced to 14 and seven years in prison respectively in a real estate corruption case, one of Khan’s closest aides says he was offered a lucrative deal to testify against the former Pakistan prime minister.
Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari is Khan’s international media adviser, and is based in London due to fears that – like many other officials in Khan’s Pakistan Threek-e-Insaf (PTI) party – he could be detained if he returns to Pakistan.
He is also one of the named defendants in the case that saw Khan and his wife convicted on Friday of obtaining land worth billions of rupees from powerful property tycoon Malik Riaz, in a deal that allegedly cost the national exchequer about Rs 50bn (£190m).
The allegations surfaced after Riaz made an agreement with the UK’s National Crime Agency in December 2019 to hand over assets, including properties, in a case linked to money laundering. Instead of depositing the funds into Pakistan’s treasury, Khan’s government allegedly used them to pay fines related to a separate land acquisition case in Karachi.
The case is arguably the most significant in dozens that have been filed against Khan since he was ousted as prime minister in 2022. In Pakistan it is known as the Al-Qadir Trust case after the welfare organisation founded by Khan and his wife that was said to have received land from Riaz. Prosecutors accused Khan, Bushra Bibi, Bukhari and others of a key role in the illicit transfer of state funds for private gain.
Khan denies any wrongdoing and says all the charges against him are designed to keep him and his party from power. Convictions in three other major cases have all either been overturned or suspended by higher courts.
Bukhari tells The Independent he faced “lots of pressure” from the authorities to turn witness against Khan in the Al-Qadir Trust case. “Anybody whose name is involved in this case was offered all sorts of deals (to testify) against Imran Khan. Luckily, none of them took that offer – not the businessman, not myself,” he says.
As well as the offer of lucrative deals, Bukhari says he faced various forms of harassment back home in Pakistan, “from kidnapping family members, destroying homes, businesses, blocking bank accounts, stripping me of all my land... no pressure tactic was left”.
“It was a two-pronged attack – carrot and a stick.”
Riaz is said to have provided land in Jhelum, Punjab and the capital Islamabad, including 458 kanals (roughly 57 acres) that was acquired to set up the Al-Qadir University, run by the trust of the same name.
“The Al-Qadir Trust case centres around the establishment of Al-Qadir University, which currently educates over 300 students... this is a nonprofit organisation... Imran Khan and his wife are not any form of beneficiaries of it. They don’t receive any wages, salaries or retainers from this trust. It is simply non-profitable at the moment,” Bukhari says.
Bukhari argues that the case does not involve personal financial gain as the funds in question remain in the Supreme Court’s custody. “The £190m, which was sent from businessman Malik Riaz, is sitting with the Supreme Court of Pakistan. That money is actually earning interest in the Supreme Court’s account. That interest benefits the government and the judicial system,” he says.
“So this whole narrative that is being spread that that money has been used or put into Mr Malik Riaz’s account, or Imran Khan’s, or his wife’s, or anyone else’s for that matter, is absolute rubbish.”
Khan told the media at Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, where he has been detained since 2023, that Bukhari was offered a lucrative deal to testify against him “in cases like Al-Qadir Trust, but he outrightly refused”, which he said has resulted in “business destroyed, family members displaced”.
“He’s always been a key player of my team,” Khan said.
He said that Bukhari “had requested to appear in this case via video link or embassy because if he came to Pakistan, the court would not protect him and like the rest, he would be arrested or kidnapped and tortured. Zulfi Bukhari’s house was illegally raided and vandalised, the family was harassed and deals were offered.”
Bukhari says he was only added to the case as a defendant because he refused to travel to Pakistan to appear as a witness in court.
Pakistan’s authorities have consistently denied that the allegations against Khan are politically motivated. In 2023 Marriyum Aurangzeb, the minister of information and broadcasting, told BBC News: “You have to be accountable for your deeds in law. This has nothing to do with politics. A person who has been proven guilty by the court has to be arrested.”
Prime minister Shahbaz Sharif, whose party orchestrated Khan’s ousting in 2022 through a vote of no confidence in parliament, has called Khan a “fraudster” and the “biggest liar in Pakistan’s history”.
On Friday, speaking about the corruption conviction from inside his jail cell, Khan said: “Today’s verdict has tarnished the reputation of the judiciary. In this case, neither I benefited nor the government lost. I don’t want any relief and I will face all cases.”
He claimed “a dictator is doing all this”. “My wife is a housewife, who has nothing to do with this phoney case and she has been given this sentence to infuriate me,” Khan said. “Dragging housewives into politics is shameful and against our traditions. Bushra Begum is a woman with strong nerves, she is not my weakness but my strength.”
PTI said Khan’s legal team planned to file an appeal against the Al-Qadir case judgement in the Islamabad High Court later this week. On Tuesday they issued a statement warning that if the PTI founder and his wife were not released promptly, and if prime minister Sharif and his associates persisted in their “stubbornness”, a new political crisis would grip the nation.
