chaudhry javed iqbal

The daughter of an internationally acclaimed artist has accused the president of Pakistan of helping to steal her mother's paintings and wants the Metropolitan Police to question him during his visit to Britain.

Dean Nelson and Gordon Rayner
Published: 11:01PM BST 03 Aug 2010

Laila Shahzada's daughter has accused the president of Pakistan of helping to steal her mother's paintings Photo: BARCROFT

Shaheen Shahzada has lodged court papers in Pakistan claiming President Asif Ali Zardari colluded with her brother to steal 93 paintings from her flat in Karachi.

The canvases, most of which were shipped to London, were the work of her mother Laila Shahzada, who gained international acclaim before her death in 1994.

Miss Shahzada has already asked Scotland Yard to help recover the paintings, worth up to £300,000 in total, and now hopes officers will contact Mr Zardari after he flew to London for a meeting with David Cameron.

Miss Shahzada's brother, however, has insisted the paintings were left to him in their mother's will, and that they are rightfully his. Mr Zardari denies any wrongdoing.

Miss Shahzada said: "The Metropolitan Police should question Zardari about it while he is in London. My brother took the paintings from the Karachi flat with the help of Zardari in 1994. No one could have touched him at the time because they were in power."

Mr Zardari has faced repeated allegations of corruption in Pakistan, where he earned the nickname "Mr 10 per cent" following claims that he had amassed a £1.1 billion fortune by taking personal commissions on government contracts.

Before he became president, he was also under investigation in Switzerland, where prosecutors discovered he had £37 million in assets, though investigators have suggested Mr Zardari had up to £740m hidden in Swiss accounts.

The Laila Shahzada paintings went missing in 1994 immediately after the artist died in a gas explosion at her home.

According to a petition lodged by Miss Shahzada at Pakistan's Supreme Court, Mr Zardari and her brother Sohail, a long-standing friend of the president, took the paintings to London and Florida, where the president has a home.

Mr Zardari has claimed in the past that he was simply looking after the paintings for Sohail Shahzada, but Miss Shahzada, 61, is adamant that they should have been shared equally between the artist's three children.

Miss Shahzada claims 53 of the paintings were destined for Rockwood House in Surrey, a £5m mansion owned by Mr Zardari and his late wife Benazir Bhutto which was later sold amid allegations it had been bought with the proceeds of corruption.

In 2005 Miss Shahzada discovered that the paintings were being stored in a warehouse in Golders Green, north London, together with a 1920s Rolls-Royce belonging to the Bhutto family.

She took photographs of the paintings and made a complaint to Scotland Yard, who she says later helped her stop some of the pictures being sold at auction. The current whereabouts of the pictures are unknown.

A spokesman for Mr Zardari said he was not aware of the paintings, while sources close to the Pakistani president have previously dismissed the allegations as "rubbish".

The Met police officer who dealt with the original complaint was unavailable for comment.

Much can be said of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's bumbling on the floor of parliament a few days ago during a speech made in relation to the issue of fake-degree holders. About how I felt, I was going to die of embarrassment for him as he muttered one contradiction after another, as his face began to confess, painfully, that he himself had begun to realise that he was making absolutely no sense – even by the generally low standards set by his fellow parliamentarians.

But before saying any of this, I think the PM needs to get one thing straight: criticising the minimum education requirement for public representatives in no way justifies his canvassing for former MNA Jamshed Dasti. Dasti, who unceremoniously resigned rather than face more ridicule before the Supreme Court, is self-admittedly guilty of holding bogus educational qualifications–which doesn't make him a lowly victim of elitist policy-making. It doesn't make him a casualty of class repression or a symbol of resistance against an oppressive system.

It makes him a flaming cheater.

A con artist; a fraudster; a charlatan.

Aside from being charged with perjury, the least his party, the PPP, could have done was to ensure that he was whisked away from the forefront and asked to lay low, lest their image was hurt further.

But the PPP did what the PPP does, and what only the PPP can understand.

They gave Dasti a ticket to contest for the vacated seat once again; and, to push the incredible into the realm of absurdity, even got a party member no less than the country's chief executive to canvass for him.

In a speech a few days ago, Dasti, seemingly unashamed by the humiliation before court and country, thundered that he would seek the mandate of an adalat (court) much higher than the High Court or Supreme Court–i.e. the people's court.

Such defiance from a man who was too frightened to reappear before the Supreme Court after an intermission to consult with his lawyer. I say frightened, because it was obviously not embarrassment that sent him running for the hills. If it had anything to do with shame, then the man would have disappeared off the scene for a while.

Perhaps even changed his name.

But he didn't.

I admire the resolve of Mr Dasti, the man who was self-righteously screaming hoarse regarding match-fixing in cricket like he was no less than the pontiff himself, right before being found holding a fake degree.

There are assorted jokes of Mr Dasti's ridiculous replies to the queries of the judges regarding his educational qualification of Religious Studies – ranging from having studied the Quaranic Tafseer of Hazrat Moosa (Moses) to not knowing what the first chapter of the Holy Book was called.

However, that doesn't seem to shake the resolve of Mr Dasti.

Then comes along the PM, who decides to justify the problem of fake degrees in general and Mr Dasti in particular. I do not know exactly what prompted the PM to become so heavily involved in an issue that ought to be embarrassing for most public representatives, let alone the PM. But it can be assumed that it had to do it under pressure from party leaders who may find themselves in the same boat as Dasti.

Gilani called for parliamentarians to band together and protect the sovereignty of parliament, adding that there should be no prerequisites for running for public office. He also said something about some sort of parliamentary committee which gave Dasti the right to run for office.

Now, this is a straw-man argument. Parliament should be supreme. The issue regarding educational qualifications for members of the highest body of the land can be debated. But neither has anything to do with holding fake degrees. I beg the PM to not conflate these issues.

Gen Musharraf's reign can be used to justify many problems that the country faces today–but he certainly cannot be held responsible for this.

If the PM wants to talk about how things are done in "civilised countries," then he should also consider what would happen if a public representative there was found holding bogus qualifications. If the PM wants to talk about parties being vigilant against holders of fake degrees, then he should start from his own party, from a man who himself admitted to having forged his degree.

After the premier's debacle of a speech came the rescue party of assorted PPP leaders, who then decided to defend the PM. One of the more interesting defenders was one Ms Asma Arbab Alamgir, a PPP MNA and an advisor to the PM. Talking on a television channel, the lady actually shrugged off the problem saying, in effect, that everyone does such things. I have never heard this lady talk before, but judging from her arguments in this case, it could very well have been she who advised the PM on his sermon on fake degrees.

Of course, all of this is a moot point. Dasti has already got the ticket. The PPP has got away with unnecessarily acting like a fool before, and probably will again. As I write this column, the by-poll is underway – and a tough battle is expected in Faisalabad.

The damage has already been done. If Dasti wins, it will be a sad day for this country; if he doesn't, it will be a sad day for the PPP. Given the drastic turn of events during the Australia-Pakistan T20 semi-final, I predict a Dasti win–because it will be a fitting way to round off a shocking weekend.

Gibran Peshimam writes about Pakistan People's Party's antics of making fraud and corruption acceptable in the society.