President Asif Zardari has set a new record within a year by taking one-third of all the expensive gifts presented to all Pakistani presidents and prime ministers. Of the gifts totalling Rs160m, Zardari has taken gifts worth Rs62m during the first year of his presidency, official records reveal.
In his foreign visits so far, Zardari has been given 27 gifts worth Rs62m, which is one-third of the accumulated cost of the 3,039 gifts, which were given to presidents and prime ministers in three decades.
Zardari is said to have got two BMWs and two foreign manufactured Toyota Jeeps as gift by Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi during his visit to Tripoli, which he took to his home, after paying a sum of only Rs9.3m as retention cost. These figures have been produced before the Senate standing committee on cabinet division by the cabinet secretary this week during a presentation to its members. Zardari is now richer by Rs50m within one year in the presidency, without doing a single rupee irregularity as this all was done under the law as he paid 15 percent of the total cost of two BMWs and two jeeps and retained them.
Zardari took the largest share within a year of his presidency.
Others including Haq, President Ghulam Ishaq, President Rafiq Tarar, Junejo, former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto, Balakh Mazari, Zafarullah Jamali and Shujaat Hussain got gifts worth Rs10m. This extraordinary list does not contain names of hundreds of ministers, federal secretaries, officials and military officers and generals who, too, received gifts from foreign dignitaries and took them home.
According to an official copy presented to the National Assembly committee members, the record of similar gifts received and retained by two prime ministers, Yousaf Gilani and Zulfiqar Bhutto, was not produced before the committee.
Sources said Tosha Khana (gifts repository) was transferred from the ministry of foreign affairs to the cabinet division in 1973 and the rules were changed from time to time to accommodate the top guns of the country so they could retain them without paying significant amounts.
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