So, is London the last refuge for the Kleptocrats-Criminals?

The country that taught us lesson regarding Rule of Law, Rule of Politics is winning there!

On September 16, 2016, Dawn published the following Situationer, which explains how law may not win over politics in UK:

Politics, not law, likely to decide murder probe
By Owen Bennett-Jones

Here is the text of the piece:

LONDON: Shortly before 17:30 on Sept 16, 2010, Dr Imran Farooq was on his way home from work when he was murdered outside his home in Green Lane, Edgware, in north London. As the police subsequently reported, a post-mortem gave his cause of death as multiple stab wounds and blunt trauma to the head.

For Dr Farooq it was a violent, brutal end. For the MQM, it was the start of a process that six years later would leave the party divided, weakened and under assault from the Pakistani state. We can never know what would have happened had Imran Farooq not been murdered but MQM insiders admit that it was an incident that changed everything.

The British police investigation has been remarkably thorough. Detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command have spoken to 4,555 people, reviewed 7,697 documents, followed up 2,423 lines of inquiry and seized 4,325 exhibits.

At each stage the police faced obstacles. Early on, for example, details of visa applications had to be prised out of a reluctant British consulate in Karachi. Despite such difficulties the police eventually identified two suspects. One, Muhammad Kashif Khan Kamran subsequently died in Pakistani custody: the other, Mohsin Ali Syed is alive and the subject of a British extradition request.

After the murder inquiry came other investigations. The police found not only piles of cash in the MQM’s buildings but also a receipt for weapons and explosives in Altaf Hussain’s home. The tax authorities started taking an interest and the MQM leader’s suggestion that his supporters play football with the heads of Karachi police officers led to a hate speech investigation.

And yet there were no charges. The MQM insists this is because it is innocent. Others have different theories. Increasing numbers of British members of parliament are asking why the cases are deadlocked. Even some of those under investigation have fully expected to be charged. Their own lawyers told them charges were inevitable.

UK protecting MQM?

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that had the MQM been a jihadi outfit there would have been charges long ago. Which raises the question: why is the British state protecting the MQM?

The answer is complicated because the reasons have changed over time. When Altaf Hussain first arrived in London the British saw him as an asset. There were regular contacts — several each week — between the MQM leadership, the Foreign Office and MI6. With a consistent haul of between 20 and 25 Members of the National Assembly, the MQM often held the balance of power in Pakistan and from time to time had federal ministers. When Britain needed things done in Pakistan it was in the happy position of having a powerful Pakistani politician beholden to British hospitality.

At various times an array of Pakistani politicians — driven, let us not forget, by self-interest rather than principle — demanded London make legal moves against the party. People who had been directly threatened in Altaf Hussain’s speeches paid visits to the British High Commissioner in Islamabad demanding action. All were brushed aside with the standard response: “He is a British citizen: it is none of your business”.

After Imran Farooq’s murder the mood of the British Foreign Office gradually began to change. Diplomats who in the past had said: “we have no evidence against the MQM” started to say: “of course, they are rather unsavoury but it’s a matter for the police”.

The British ship of state, it seemed, was adjusting itself to the possibility that there would indeed be charges.

But then a new factor come into play: it became known that two senior MQM officials had given statements to the British police that some of their funding came from India. Paradoxically, the revelation helped the MQM because it raised the possibility that evidence of India’s funding of terrorists could be heard in a British court. Indian officials made it clear that this would be unacceptable. Given the high priority Britain has given to improving its trade relationship with India, Delhi’s concerns were taken seriously.

Having initially been motivated by a desire to protect its own interests, London found itself trying to protect India’s. Which is why just a month ago there was every chance that all the cases would have been dropped.

The Aug 22 speech

And then Altaf Hussain made his August speech. The British police had become so accustomed to their investigations into the MQM leading nowhere that their initial response was to shrug their shoulders and say it was a matter for Karachi law enforcement authorities. But the speech and the divisions it created within the MQM had created a new political situation and the next day – when Scotland Yard rather belatedly realised this – the British police set up a new incitement investigation.

The incitement could satisfy everyone. The British could help overcome their PR problem in Pakistan by at last being able to say: “we have moved against the party, just as many Pakistanis demanded”. While Islamabad’s would prefer money laundering charges so that the Indian funding evidence is heard in a British court, it would welcome charges of any kind. For its part, India has no reason to stand in the way of a British trial as long as it steers clear of the funding issues.

So six years after Imran Farooq was murdered, the MQM has been bashed and battered but it has still not been knocked out. The pressure that Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is applying on London is having an impact, especially in the Foreign Office, but there is still some way to go before London decisively changes it attitude. These cases have a tendency to drag on longer than anyone expects but it should be the case that by the seventh anniversary of Imran Farooq’s death we will finally know the legal fate of the MQM’s London leadership. And the history of the whole story suggests that the outcome will depend not so much on the law but on politics.

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And now the The New York Times has this to say on the issue:

London Rolls Out the Blood-Red Carpet for Kleptocrats

By BEN JUDAH

DEC, 29, 2016

LONDON — Six years ago, the government of Kurmanbek Bakiyev nearly killed me. I remember it well, because it killed a man standing near me. It wasn’t specifically me, or him, they were trying to kill. They were simply firing live rounds at protesters.

This was a forgotten massacre in an overlooked country. The killings took place in Bishkek, the rickety capital of the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, at the start of the 2010 revolution that overthrew Mr. Bakiyev’s autocratic rule.

His regime had been about one thing: personal plunder. But the Kyrgyz people’s patience had finally worn out. That April I was among the crowd near the presidential palace chanting “Stop corruption now” when the guards started shooting.

I ran for my life, but the Kyrgyz man nearby was not so lucky. I saw his bloodied, punctured body being dragged away by other protesters. As the regime teetered and fell, Mr. Bakiyev fled and found refuge in Belarus. Some days later I paid a visit to the Bishkek morgue to record how many people had been shot. I saw plenty. More than 40 protesters were killed.

This is why it angers me that today, the dictator’s son and confidant, Maxim Bakiyev, lives in a mansion purchased in 2010 for $4.3 million in a London suburb less than 20 miles from my own family home. Little did I know, when I flew back after the Bishkek massacre, that Mr. Bakiyev was also traveling to Britain.

Of course, it was no surprise, because London has become a personal valet to men like him: It’s a dictators’ safe space, where billions of dollars are laundered through the London real estate market every year, contributing to what the National Crime Agency estimates to be an annual total of more $125 billion laundered in Britain.

In Kyrgyzstan, Maxim Bakiyev was convicted in absentia, in a series of cases over 2013 and 2014, for attempted murder, embezzlement of millions in state funds, illegal privatization of public land and corruption in selling off state assets; he received sentences varying from 25 years to life. His lawyers say the charges were politically motivated, and Mr. Bakiyev has claimed political asylum in Britain. (When I contacted the Home Office to request an update on the status of this claim, I was told that government policy is not to comment on any individual case.) In London, he has enjoyed a life of genteel seclusion, with a library, a home cinema and a bar.

The Bakiyev regime was always seen as a family affair, a kleptocratic triumvirate of the son, his father and his uncle. For this reason, Maxim Bakiyev has remained one of the most loathed figures in his hard-done-by homeland.

When I learned that Mr. Bakiyev lived in London, I decided to research the ownership of the mansion he lives in. But this one simple thing is impossible to discover; the true owner, and the true origins of the money, are cloaked under an anonymous offshore company registered in Belize.

The watchdog group Global Witness is calling for an investigation into Mr. Bakiyev’s affairs. The Kyrgyz authorities, according to Global Witness, believe that this Belize-registered company is linked to an alleged money-laundering scheme used to funnel state funds out of Kyrgyzstan. Global Witness’s 2015 report on Maxim Bakiyev, “Blood Red Carpet,” criticizes British authorities, lawyers and real estate agents for failing “to prevent a man linked to corruption and violence from setting up home in a luxury suburb in London.”

But how would it be otherwise? British law is on the side of the kleptocrats. All an autocrat on the run has to do is create a shell company to hide his identity and the source of his illicit wealth, and then use this instrument to purchase property incognito. Britain’s best-paid brokers and lawyers are here to help — and will ask no awkward questions about the provenance of their clients’ cash.

Such anonymous companies now own nearly 40,000 London properties. Some of these purchases may be entirely legitimate and innocent, but these tools of secrecy are well known to be favored by money launderers: The anticorruption organization Transparency International has found that this technique has been used for three-quarters of properties whose owners have been investigated for corruption in Britain.

Just because there aren’t bodies on the streets of London doesn’t mean London isn’t abetting those who pile them up elsewhere. The British establishment has long feigned ignorance of the business, but the London Laundromat is destroying the country’s reputation. Across the former Soviet Union, Britain is now seen as a partner in corruption, not democracy, for elites seeking to asset-strip their own states. The elected president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, has repeatedly called — in vain — for Britain to stop sheltering “a guy who robbed us.”

Amid this shame and gloom, one ray of light has emerged: a serious chance of the reforms we need to stop human rights abusers from using London real estate to hide their wealth. In Parliament, a growing cross-party band of members is seeking to amend the Criminal Finances Bill, now making its way through the legislative process.

This amendment, named after the Russian lawyer and corruption whistle-blower Sergei L. Magnitsky, who died in prison in suspicious circumstances, would allow officials and organizations like Global Witness to apply for a court order to freeze the assets of human rights violators. When presented with evidence and a clear public-interest case, government ministers would be legally bound to act.

Whether this reform is adopted will tell us much about who Prime Minister Theresa May really is. If her government kills the amendment, it will show that she is content for Britain to remain a safe haven for dictators — while London’s bankers, lawyers and real estate brokers make commissions on their blood money. It’s time London rolled up the red carpet.

Ben Judah is the author, most recently, of “This Is London.”

Bilawal - a political crown prince

History is replete with stories of off-springs used in order to seize and wield power. One such story has been narrated by Abdul Haleem Sharar in his excellent Urdu book, “Guzishta Lucknow” (Lucknow of the past). In its chapter on “Jang-e-Azadi aur Lucknow” (War of Independence and Lucknow), he writes: “The King, Wajid Ali Shah himself was in Calcutta, his family was in London, and . . . the conflict over the cartridges and government’s insistence suddenly caused a mutiny and from Merrut to Bengal such revolt flared up that the homes of every friend and foe were burnt and such a strife broke out that the foundations of British government in India appeared to be shaking.

“The way rebels of Merrut etc came to be converged in Delhi and made Zafar Shah Emperor of India, likewise the rebels of Allahabad and Faizabad reached Lucknow in May 1857. The moment they reached here many of the loiterers found a cause and girded up their loins and when they failed to find any other member of the royal family of Oudh, they enthroned Wajid Ali Shah’s 10 year old minor child Mirza Birjees Qadr and her mother Nawab Mahal became the sovereign-custodian of the Kingdom. A limited number of English army was posted here, and all the European officials of the Kingdom who could save their lives from the hands of the rebels fortified in Bailey Guard around which trenches were dug and sufficient arrangements for a safe living made. It proved good and fortunate that Wajid Ali Shah had already left Lucknow otherwise he would have been made the King, willy-nilly. His death would have been far worse than that of Zafar Shah and the ruined and the doomed of Oudh would not have found that ephemeral flourish in the court of Matiya Burj that they happily enjoyed.”

The only reason Mirza Birjees Qadr was enthroned was that he belonged to the royal family and could be treated as the legitimate claimant of the throne; he could win the assent of the subjects also. Another reason could be that in case of a controversy he could be presented before the English as the legitimate heir to the throne. At that time royalty’s right to kingship was considered valid; it is in accord with this right that the English used to make provision for stipend, pension, etc, to the members of royal families. He was made King for the reason also that he belonged to the reigning family and that was why he had to act as supreme commander of the army also. The same was the case with Bahadur Shah Zafar.

What made such enthronements of minors problematic is that those poor souls were quite oblivious of the fact of their responsibility; their age naturally required them to be living playfully and in carelessness; how come that they would possess such wisdom which is necessary to understand and resolve the intricate and complex issues and affairs of the Kingdom and the politics woven around the seat of power; for the same reason when the rebels of Lucknow burdened Birjees Qadr with the crown of the Kingdom his mother was made sovereign-custodian and it was she who in fact saw to the affairs of the Kingdom. That means Birjees Qadr who was made the King was merely a showpiece; the real power to rule rested with his mother Nawab Mahal. Apparently it was a necessary arrangement and involved no political trickery. However, if this arrangement was not put in place, the throne may have been lost.

Sharar relates that this was Birjees Qadr’s “rule” in Lucknow but Hazrat Mahal’s “government.” However, the coinage was issued in the name of Birjees Qadr; officials of the Kingdom appointed; and revenue started coming in from all over the country. In the November of the same year just six or seven months after the enthronement of Birjees Qadr the English army reached Lucknow to recover it. The English army was composed of Sikhs of Punjab and mountaineer people of Nepal, and it is said that it were they who committed more of the cruelties. The impression that the new Kingdom produced disappeared in the face of bombardment of two or three days as a cobweb perishes. Nawab Mahal herself and Birjees Qadr had to flee towards Nepal along with other escapees. Since it was a crowd of about hundred thousand people hence consultation decided to take shelter in the valleys of Himalayas and attack the English army when opportunity facilitates; in case of victory go back to the homeland and take up the charge of the Kingdom, and in case of defeat continue living in the mountains. That was difficult to happen, no doubt!

That’s a political story of 19^th century. We are living in the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century. But the news about the rolling out of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari recalled to my mind that more than 150 year old story and made me think: Is Pakistan of today no more different from the Kingdom of Oudh of 1857? Actually Bilawal’s coronation had already been accomplished when his mother Benazir Bhutto was killed in 2007. Then his father Asif Ali Zardarin himself occupied the co-chairmanship of the Peoples Party while Bilawal was enthroned as its chairman. Aren’t Bilawal, Mirza Birjees Qadr and his father Asif Ali Zardari, Nawab Mahal of today’s Pakistan? Doesn’t real power of the PPPP and its politics rest with Asif Ali Zardari, who is like Nawab Mahal, sovereign-custodian of the Party? As a king at the time of his coronation was honored with various titles; in the same manner when Bilawal was made chairman of the PPPP, he was given the title of Bhutto Zardari. That proves his political hereditary lineage, or political-cum-royal lineage! But that raises certain pertinent questions:  Is PPPP a party like the royal family of Wajid Ali Shah? Is Pakistan like the Kingdom of Oudh? Are its leaders Aitzaz Ahsan, Raza Rabbani and others merely courtiers paying homage to the new Crow Prince? Are the workers and voters of PPPP nothing but subjects of its Political Kingdom wherein Bilawal has been made a Political Crown Prince?

Note: This article was completed on July 30 and was originally posted in October 2014.