Benazir Bhutto, who is scheduled to return to Pakistan on Thursday after 9 years in exile,may reclaim hundreds of millions of pounds frozen in Swiss bank accounts.
LONDON: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is scheduled to return to Pakistan on Thursday after nine years in exile, and her husband may reclaim hundreds of millions of pounds frozen in Swiss bank accounts.
Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari may reclaim the money frozen in Swiss bank accounts as they were alleged to have amassed a fortune from kickbacks on government contracts during her two terms as Prime Minister, The Sunday Times reported quoting senior anti-corruption officials in Lahore.
Their assets allegedly included a 10-bedroom, mock-Tudor Surrey mansion and 740 million pounds in Swiss bank accounts, the report said.
Hassan Waseem Afzal, a high-flying civil servant who led the Bhutto investigation for 10 years, said last week that he believed the deal with President Pervez Musharraf to drop the corruption charges would unlock the frozen accounts.
The accounts were registered in the names of Bhutto's mother Begum Nusrat Bhutto and Zardari, a former minister. But Afzal said the Pakistan government and a Swiss magistrate had obtained evidence that Bhutto herself was a beneficiary.
Last week Bhutto's chief spokesman said she denied having any of the frozen accounts and insisted that all cases against her should be dropped. "These were not accounts belonging to Benazir Bhutto," he said.
Her Pakistan People's Party has spent millions preparing a "heroine's welcome" for her return on Thursday.
She is widely expected to become Prime Minister again after parliamentary elections in January if she can reverse a constitutional ban on serving more than two terms.
Since Musharraf announced his amnesty, lawyers for Bhutto and other politicians have been approaching Pakistani and international courts for dismissal of the cases.
The PPP has written to an investigating magistrate in Switzerland, where Bhutto and her husband are being prosecuted for alleged money laundering, to inform him that the Pakistan government has dropped all cases against them.
Bhutto and Zardari were convicted in absentia by a Swiss court in 2003. Zardari had spent seven years in prison in Pakistan on corruption charges.
The Swiss magistrate found that during her second term as Prime Minister she enriched herself or her husband with kickbacks from a government contract with two Swiss companies.
Bhutto's lawyer denied the charges and successfully appealed to have the case tried by a higher court.
Bhutto has always denied that she has any overseas assets and her lawyers said whether any accounts had been "unfrozen" was of no interest to her.
Bhutto has also denied that she or her husband owned Rockwood, the four million pounds Surrey mansion.
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