Ex-pakistani leaders have debts that need paying
By Willi Germund
KARACHI (DPA): The wall-to-wall soft plush carpet absorbs every noise, while every 10 yards looms a broad-shouldered man brandishing a heavy machine-gun from his plastic chair. Figures scuttle hurriedly down the corridor on the top floor of the United Bank Limited (UBL).
Several days ago the eighth floor of Pakistan's second-largest bank was paid a visit by the tearful wife and daughter of Saifur Rehman, one of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's closest advisers.
Yes, they dolefully exclaimed, they were ready to pay a substantial down-payment on the US$25.5 million owed the bank by husband and father.
Until the military coup swept his powerful friend from power last month, Rehman was head of Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which functions -- or rather, functioned -- as the country's audit office.
Until the coup, things were different. Sitting in his office high above Karachi's bustling financial district, UBL's president Zubyr Soomro recalls: "We used to get calls, even at three a.m., from his thugs threatening me personally -- because we had indicted Rehman for non-payment of debts."
Banker Soomro was hired in July 1997 by Sharif to restructure the state bank. But the friendship had turned sour by the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests in May 1998, when the ensuing sanctions imposed by the world at large brought the economy to the verge of bankruptcy.
The chill in relations with the premier quickly led to the country's number two bank being robbed of its independence. Soomro, who spent years overseas pursuing a successful career at a North American bank, felt the winds of change when he tried to pressure Saifur Rehman into repaying his debts at UBL.
Yet Rehman's personal debts of $25.5 million are only a drop in the ocean compared to the sums the bank has for years been chasing.
Altogether, the sum of bad debts owed to UBL amounts to $380 million, and that figure does not include those held by its foreign branches. The bank holds securities to the value of only $200 million.
"When I took over here in July 1997, 62 percent of our outstanding loans were bad debts," says Soomro as he energetically stubs out his cheap Prince Edward cigar in a glass ashtray. "Before I took over this office, no one needed to lodge securities -- sifarish was enough."
Sifarish is an Urdu word meaning "influence". During the past decades it provided the key to commercial and political prosperity in Pakistan: "Who you know, not what you know," as the saying goes.
The lion's shared of UBL's debts is owed by a mere 29 people, all with excellent contacts to the former civilian government. Saifur Rehman has the largest minus, an exalted position directly proportionate to his plus of sifarish.
Rehman, like his political master Sharif, has been in prison since the military takeover on Oct. 12. The army junta is taking its time over bringing charges against him. Just as well, as his lawyers only seldom have access to the prisoner, let alone his family.
Hence the familial visit to UBL: in their insecurity, wife and daughter thought they could help Rehman's situation by paying off some of his debts.
Conversely, Rehman's former boss Nawaz Sharif, elected prime minister in 1997 for a second term, knows exactly what he has coming to him.
On Monday, after holding him incommunicado for four weeks -- "house arrest" was the term used -- he appeared a second time in an anti-terrorist court of his own making. So far, his judicial creation, set up earlier this year, has sent 50 offenders to the gallows.
Sharif, too, ought to prepare himself to face the hangman. Under his own rules, the seriousness of the charges he faces (conspiracy, treason and air piracy) are ample to ensure that.
Respectfully standing to face the court, Sharif explained to judge and jury: "I could not have hijacked the plane. That is something that can only be done with a weapon in hand."
Sharif did not appear well after four weeks in solitary confinement: he looked pale and thin and had obvious trouble containing his nervousness.
"What's happening? Has my trial started," Sharif was reported as saying when he was loaded into the armored van taking him from central Karachi's high-security prison to the courthouse.
Before disappearing into the prison van he was still able to splutter his sad reflection that "democracy has been hijacked at gunpoint."
That may be true; but Sharif's days as a respected politician are over.
The new army leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf's obscure and heavy- handed behavior has so far only succeeded in upsetting the country's human rights commission. It says that Sharif's and associates' treatment is in contravention of legal guidelines.
Bank president Soomro, though, has difficulty concealing his relief at the political changes: since Sharif was removed from power, he no longer receives phone calls making it clear that the list of 821 lawyers in his service should, for his own good, be extended to include a few of Sharif's cronies. The anonymous callers were obviously banking on lucrative contracts from UBL.
Instead, since Musharraf took over, UBL has enjoyed more takings than it has known for a long time. Since Oct. 12, three billion rupees ($55 million) has been received from creditors -- more in a month than in the first nine months of the year.
Arif Warzi, 38, has suffered enough not to feel any pity with Sharif and gang. Despite a university degree in Urdu literature, he was always prevented from becoming a teacher: "I didn't have enough to buy myself a job," says the father of three.
At present, he earns his keep as a chauffeur or occasionally works as a "guest worker" in the Gulf emirates. "We Pakistanis want to see him hang," says Warzi.
"The people want to see something symbolic; they want to see a few big fish get punished," says Ross Massood, a part-time ministerial adviser in the capital, Islamabad.
Yet one month after the coup d'etat there are still no clear signs as to what the military regime intends to do. Apparently, its economic plans will be announced on Dec. 15, and 22,000 officers from Pakistan's 600,000-strong armed forces have already taken control of the country at district-level, telling the country's 140 million inhabitants how to manage their affairs.
As things stand, one thing is clear: it will take several years before the generals will be tempted to hand back the reins of power to a civilian administration.
Bank employee Malik Bashir in Islamabad is under no illusions what lies before Pakistan until then. "When people get powerful, they turn into pharaohs and forget the people."