ISLAMABAD – A scrutiny committee of the Election Commission of Pakistan has found irregularities in the audit reports submitted by the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the foreign funding case, local media reported.
The scrutiny committee submitted its report to ECP during today’s hearing. The report said, “as per the opinion of the Chartered Accountant Firms, the statement of Account fairly presents, in all material respects [sic], the cash receipt of PTI for each year mentioned in the table above, on the basis of accounting described by the firm in its audit report. However, during the course scrutiny, the committee observed deviations in figures as the same do not reconcile with the bank statements.”
“[The] PTI changed its Chartered Accountant Firm in last year and employed the same firm which had issued the certificate in the first year of the above table [present in the report]. However, as reported the same text of audit report was issued to [the PTI] Central Executive Committee (CEC),” a media report quoted the report as saying.
It highlighted that the audit report provided to the elections commission deviated from the accounting standards as “no date has reflected” by the CA firm.
“No date has been reflected by the Chartered Accountant firm in its audit report issued to CEC in 2012-13, which is a material deviation from accounting standards. Hence the date has been reflected in the above table as ‘Nil’,” it added.
It stated, “the petitioner provided documents pertaining to the receipt of funds through fundraising, donations and contributions by [the] PTI from [the] USA and other countries. [E]specially, the fundraising, which was recorded in FARA documents annexed by the petitioner with his complaint and subsequently downloaded by the committee from FARA website were examined in detail being a [piece of] material evidence on fundraising activity by [the] PTI in the USA.”
Following the damning report, Federal Planning Minister Asad Umar in a press conference outside the ECP said that PTI will extend cooperation to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the foreign funding case.
He said that the funds were raised by the party in most transparent manner, adding that the nation has complete confidence in Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The planning minister said people will see how transparently PTI collected the funds after ECP released the report of the scrutiny committee.
He said that the secret accounts of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) were emerging.
