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A tale of unbridled avarice and graft

Pakistan's deposed prime minister, Nawaz Sharief, skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars from public works, wheat imports, sugar exports and other government projects, says The New York Times.

The daily quotes the director-general of Pakistan's Federal Investigative Agency Rehman Malik saying that Sharief enriched himself, his family and his friends in government deals he conducted as prime minister.

''He was running the government like his own private business,'' Malik said in an interview to the daily.

Malik says he has hundreds of pages of records describing Sharief's use of state power for profit. They appear to document a decade of graft, it began when Sharief was a rising politician in the 1980s, grew during his first term as prime minister, from 1991 to 1993, when he was dismissed by Pakistan's president on corruption charges, and continued in his second term, from 1997 until he was replaced in a military coup two weeks ago, the records show.

The daily says Malik (47) has spent five years looking into Shariefs financial practices. Jailed by Sharief after his re-election in 1997, freed and exonerated by Pakistan's supreme court a year later, he lives in exile in London.

It says the records, including government documents, signed affidavits from Pakistani officials, bank files and property records, detail deals that Malik says benefited Sharief, his family and his political associates.

* At least 160 million dollars pocketed from a contract to build a highway from Lahore, his home town, to Islamabad, the nation's capital.

* At least 140 million dollars in unsecure loans from Pakistan's state banks, which he says went to finance companies owned or controlled by Sharief.

* More than 60 million dollars generated from government rebates on sugar exported by mills controlled by Sharief and his business associates.

* At least 58 million dollars skimmed from inflated prices paid for imported wheat from the United States and Canada.

UNI

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