Zardari Got Kickbacks in Submarines Purchase: French Daily
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari allegedly got a bribe of million of dollars for the purchase of three French submarines for the Pakistani Navy in 1994, reported a French daily.
In its Tuesday’s edition, the daily ‘Liberation’ claimed citing the documents acquired by it that Zardari received $4.3 million kickbacks from the sale of three Agosta-90 submarines, sold at 825 euros (currently $1.23 billion).
Moreover, the daily reported that investigators felt the non-payment of the full amount of the agreed kickbacks might have resulted into the deaths of 11 French nationals in a terror strike in 2002 in Karachi.
However, the claims made by the daily received rapping in Islamabad where a spokesman of the government took serious exceptions to them.
The spokesman pointed out that the Armed Forces of Pakistan purchases equipment through a proper competitive process under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence.
He also said that Zardari was neither the President nor the Prime Minister nor the Defence Minister at the time of purchase of the submarines.
The then ‘Admiral’ responsible for this purchase was investigated by the Accountability Bureau but no allegation of misdoing could be established by the investigation authorities against Zardari, the spokesman added.
