Pakistani mafia using bribe, blackmailing to put pressure on Judiciary

Imran Khan

Islamabad: Taking a dig at former premier Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister Imran Khan said Saturday that the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to put pressure on state institutions and judiciary to protect their billions of money laundering stashed abroad.

Khan's statement came after a video surrounding the trial of Sharif was leaked by PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz. In the video, according to the PML-N, Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik admitted that he convicted Sharif without evidences, The News reported. Sharif is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence in the Kot Lakhpat jail in the eastern city of Lahore. He was convicted and jailed last year after failing to prove the source of income that had led to his ownership of a steel mill in Saudi Arabia. Malik has rebutted the claims made by the Opposition party.

He said it is an attempt to malign him and his institution. On Friday, the Islamabad High Court wrote to Law Ministry to de-notify Malik after he failed to satisfy the judges over the video. In an affidavit submitted to the court, the judge claimed that he was blackmailed through an immoral video of him and was offered huge bribes by the Sharif Family. "In a similar vein to the "Sicilian mafia", the Pakistani mafia uses tactics of bribe, threat, blackmail and begging to pressurise state institutions and judiciary in order to protect their billions of money laundering stashed abroad," Khan tweeted, without naming Sharif.

With the tweet, he also attached a November 2014 news story about former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano who told a trial that mobsters carried out bombings in the 1990s to coerce the government. Sharif's daughter Maryam hit back at the mafia tweet and accused Khan of operating like mafia. "You're a part of the mafia that pressurises judges into targeting & punishing your political opponents. It is you who used the institutions to settle scores with your opponents & defaced & maligned them in the process. Shame on you," she wrote on twitter.

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