THE 350-acre estate that Benazir bought in Surrey and the house on Wilton Crescent in fashionable Belgravia may just be small stuff in relation to the reports of her real wealth abroad that Pakistan's Ehtesab Commissioner Saifur Rehman has begun to divulge.
On the basis of this, the British and Pakistani media are reporting Pakistan's own Bofors that never was: an agreement by the French company Dassault to pay $200 million to Marleton Business, a company said to be controlled by Asif Zardari, for the sale of 32 Mirage aircraft to Pakistan. The deal was, however, cancelled.
The new information, some of it carried in The Sunday Times, speaks of 12 offshore companies suspected to hold Bhutto family wealth and two properties other than the Surrey estate and the Belgravia home. Information came to the Pakistani government in dramatic circumstances, The Sunday Times reported. A 'source' offered the Pakistanis information a year ago for $10 million. The offer was declined then, but was made again recently in a hotel near Hyde Park.
Some of Zardari's offshore companies had names like Bomer Finance, Capricorn Trading or Marleton Business, going by the information released by Rehman. And documents on transfers of money carry names like "Nusrat", "Zardari" and "BB". Some of the payoffs have come through award of a contract to improve the Pakistani Customs, to give a licence to a Dubai dealer for import of gold, through deals of all sorts still being investigated.
Some of the more recent deals abroad are the purchase of a flat in South Kensington and the transfer of £50,000 from a numbered account in a Swiss bank to Zardari's account in Barclays. The documents also point to the purchase of a single item of jewellery for £100,000. Six London accounts are reportedly being probed. Not surprisingly, the reports have made Benazir's friends in Britain uneasy.