No business activity after assuming presidency: Zardari

ISLAMABAD: Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief Asif Ali Zardari has told a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted by the Supreme Court to probe alleged money laundering committed through fake bank accounts that he has not been involved in any business activity since 2008.

Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur appeared before the JIT separately for their suspected involvement in the fake accounts.

The former president stayed with members of the JIT for about one and a half hours and answered the questions they put to him, oficials said.

He told the JIT members that after assuming the presidency of Pakistan in 2008, he dissociated himself from all his business and economic ventures as per the laws concerned. Since then he has not been involved in any business activity.

Zardari also said that after becoming president, he resigned from the position of director of the Zardari Group, one of the groups allegedly involved in the fake bank accounts case. He told the JIT that he was no longer associated with it. Talpur appeared before the JIT some two hours before her brother did.

Oficials said she told the JIT that their lawyer, Abu Bakar Zardari, was looking after their “legal and inancial affairs.” Therefore, he would be in a better position to respond to their questions.

She left the investigators half an hour later. Subsequently, the JIT members called Abu Bakar Zardari for questioning.