Web Desk (LTN NEWS): PTI’s conspiracy to derail the IMF deal broke out in which Shaukat Tareen’s telephonic conversation with the finance ministers of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came to light.
On the tapes that were leaked, the former PTI government’s finance minister could be heard asking the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) finance ministers to pull out of the IMF deal because floods in the provinces had caused so much damage.
In the leaked audio, Shaukat Tarin can be heard asking Punjab Finance Minister Mohsin Leghari to write to the IMF and tell them that the promise Punjab made was made before the floods, and now the province “cannot honor it.”
“You have signed an Rs750 billion [surplus] agreement with the IMF. You need to tell them that the promise you made was made before the floods and that now Punjab has to spend a lot of money to help flood victims. You need to say now, ‘We won’t be able to keep our promise,'” Tarin told Leghari, adding that this is all he wants: for more pressure to be put on the government that is already in place.
The leader of the PTI told the finance minister to write a letter and send it to him for review so that it could be sent to the federal government and then to the IMF representative in Pakistan.
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Leghari then asked Tarin if Pakistan as a whole would be hurt if Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, pulled out of the deal. Tarin said, “Well, to be honest, isn’t the state already hurting because of how they treat your chairman, Imran Khan, and everyone else? The IMF will ask them, “Where are you going to get the money now?” Tarin spoke up.
At the end of the conversation, Tarin said, “We’ll make a scene that makes it look like we’re not hurting the state.” At the end of the day, we should keep in mind that you won’t be able to pay (because you have extra money), which means that your promise means nothing.
Tarin said that this could not go on and that the group could not stand to be “mistreated” and not say anything. The leader of the PTI said, “We can’t be forced to do anything.” Yesterday, everyone agreed on this. That’s the right way to do it. We will ask the chairman if only the federal government should get it. Or we should talk to the IMF about it,” Shaukat Tarin said.
Leghari says that social media is the most powerful tool then Tarin says, “Then there’s no reason to let it go.” It will get out on its own through social media, and Jhagra said that he knows No. 2 of the IMF very well and that he will do it.
In another leaked audio, Tarin talks to KP Finance Minister Taimur Jhagra and asks him if he wrote the letter. In response, the finance minister of the province says, “I’m on my way. I have the letter before this one. I’ll send you the letter after I write it.”
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Based on what he had asked Leghari, Tarin tells Jhagra that the flood damage in the province should be the main point of his letter. “[The] first point would be that we need a lot of money to fix up infrastructure and help flood victims get back on their feet. I’ve already discussed it with Punjab’s finance minister.”
Jhagra says, “By the way, this is a way to get money out of people: no one gives money. I won’t, but I’m not sure if Mohsin will or not,” he said. Tarin tells him that if he (Jhagra) won’t release the money, Leghari won’t be able to either.
The KP finance minister says, “Both Khan Sahab (Imran Khan) and Mehmood Khan (CM KP) told me that we will hold a joint news conference, which is what was decided at the meeting yesterday.”
Tarin told the KP finance minister to give the letter to the people today, and he also said there would be no news conference.
The audio leaks “backed up” the idea that Jhagra’s letter to Miftah Ismail last week, in which he threatened to pull out of the IMF commitment, was an attempt to stop the government from stabilizing the economy.
Later, Miftah Ismail told a press conference that Shaukat Tarin called the finance ministers of Punjab and KP on the advice of former Prime Minister Imran Khan to get them to write to the IMF about the issue of revenue surplus, which was bad for the country.
“Writing letters to a foreign institution is treason, and Shaukat Tarin should leave politics after audiotapes were leaked,” Miftah said. “KP’s finance minister should also resign.”
He said that Pakistan is currently sinking and that the international money lender is their only hope after God. “The move by PTI was planned by Shaukat Tarin. Is Imran Khan so eager to get back in charge that he will do anything? Is Imran Khan bigger than Pakistan?”
“Should we call it Bani Gala instead of Pakistan? Don’t they feel shame? “How can they go this low?” asked the finance minister.
Miftah said that Shaukat Tarin encouraged the finance ministers of Punjab and KP to do something against the state. He said that the KP finance minister told him that he had not sent the letter to the lender in which he said he was pulling out of the IMF deal. “Shame on you… I checked it out, and the letter was sent to the IMF.”
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The finance minister said that the coalition government did some hard things, but that it was all done to keep the country from going bankrupt. Some PMLN leaders, like Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Nawaz Sharif, did not want to take power.
“This time, you’ve done everything wrong,” he told the PTI. In response to a question about whether vegetables and Agri products could be brought in from India, he said that trade could be restarted to prevent food shortages in the country. However, he said that resuming trade with India was his own opinion.
In answer to another question, he said that the current flash floods were going to cost Pakistan $10 billion.
Separately, Punjab Finance Minister Mohsin Leghari didn’t question whether or not the leaked audio was real, but he also didn’t want to say how serious the call was.
When he asked Shaukat Tarin if he refused to write a letter because “it (writing a letter to the IMF) would hurt Pakistan as a state,” he refused to say anything about it. But he said that you could only know what was really going on if you heard the whole conversation between any two people. People always have different ideas,” he said.
“The conversation between me and Shaukat Tarin, which was leaked, was not finished. If you listen to a conversation from start to finish, you can figure out what was talked about,” he told on Monday.
Leghari said that the Punjab government did not send anything to the IMF or write a letter to the IMF, no matter what he and Shaukat Tarin talked about. But he wondered if it was moral to record a conversation between two people. He said that no one was asking why phone calls were being recorded, which was wrong. He said that a certain “thing” was taken out of the conversation.
When asked if his party had done anything against him for writing a letter to the IMF against the party line, he said that no one had asked him about it yet. “The party can do something about it, but no one is telling me not to write a letter,” he said.
When Iftikhar Amjad talked separately, he said that the finance department did not write such a letter. “The Finance Department follows the decisions made by the government. If the government had asked the finance department to write a letter to the IMF, they would have done so,” he said.
The part of my conversation with former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin that was leaked was not the whole thing. “If you listen to a conversation from start to finish, you can figure out what was talked about,” he told on Monday.
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Leghari said that the Punjab government did not send anything to the IMF or write a letter to the IMF, no matter what he and Shaukat Tarin talked about. But he wondered if it was moral to record a conversation between two people. He said that no one was asking why phone calls were being recorded, which was wrong. He said that a certain “thing” was taken out of the conversation.
When asked if his party had done anything against him for writing a letter to the IMF against the party line, he said that no one had asked him about it yet. “The party can do something about it, but no one is telling me not to write a letter,” he said.
When Iftikhar Amjad talked separately, he said that the finance department did not write such a letter. “The Finance Department follows the decisions made by the government. If the government had asked the finance department to write a letter to the IMF, they would have done so,” he said.
Shireen Mazari, a senior PTI leader, said that the audio leak meant that the call between Shaukat Tarin and the provincial finance minister had been leaked. In a tweet, she said that nothing about the conversation was wrong or against the law. “We have been very clear that we don’t agree with the terms under which the foreign government gets loans from the IMF,” she said.
In this case, the PTI leader said that it is a very serious crime to secretly record the conversation without a court order.
