ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Wednesday former spy chief Gen Faiz Hameed was being investigated for corruption and accumulating “assets beyond means.”
Hameed, who retired in December last year, is widely accused by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of bringing down the government of his brother, Nawaz Sharif, who became premier of Pakistan for the third time in 2013. The PMLN says Hameed worked with then opposition leader Imran Khan to plot Nawaz’s ouster through a series of court cases, culminating with the Supreme Court disqualifying him from office in 2017.
During an interview with a local TV channel, Sanaullah was asked about corruption investigations against Hameed.
“Those investigations are of different types and most parts are financial,” Sanaullah said in Nadeem Malik Live.
During a press conference earlier in the day, the interior minister said a probe was being conducted against the ex-Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) boss and his brothers over alleged corruption and accumulating assets beyond means. He declined to share more details.
“When something surfaces, you will be informed,” Sanaullah told reporters.
Neither Hameed, nor the army, has yet commented publicly on Sanaullah’s remarks.
Investigations against senior officers of the all-powerful army are extremely rare in Pakistan, where the military has ruled for almost half of the nearly 76 years of the country’s history. In recent months, however, former ISI chief Hameed and ex-army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa have come under immense public scrutiny over their alleged interference in politics in the last days of the Nawaz Sharif government in 2017 and their efforts to bring Khan to power in a 2018 general election.
