The Plan To Get Pakistan’s Chief Judge: Malik Riaz As Interim Prime Minister In Exchange For Bringing Down The Chief Justice?

“Public office may forever remain a pipe dream for an individual who had the audacity to justify, in a televised interview, that he offered bribes and illegal gratifications to conduct routine business in Pakistan. That he has been intelligently used is now quite obvious and it’s only a matter of time before the real players get exposed, writes Mohammad Malick.

The editor of the federal edition of Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper, Mohammad Malick of The News International, has detailed the intrigue that went into the plan to bring down the powerful chief of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

Malick’s column today describes the plan to bring the Chief Justice. The details are based on Malick’s own conversation earlier this week with an Islamabad insider linked to the government of President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani. Malick does not name the insider.

The bottom line is simple: Real estate tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain threw a little over three million dollars to entrap the son of the chief justice in the hope of building evidence to bring down his father. In the process, the tycoon hoped he would get the Chief Justice to rule favorably in cases of fraud and land-grab against his signature project, the Bahria Town.

Mali Riaz made his billions by buying influence [Read: bribes] among Pakistan’s powerful politicians, bureaucrats and retired military officers.

Interestingly, the Zardari/Gilani government is hopeful it still can ‘get’ the Chief Justice by mid-July.

The details can be read in Mohammad Malick’s column in The News. Here are the salient points:

1. The plan was to trap the son of the Chief Justice getting the bribes and then make the evidence public
2. The plan was to have the Chief Justice issue favorable rulings in cases involving Bahria Town and then show the rulings to be the result of bribes paid to his son
3. The escalation began on June 13 when government’s top lawyer misbehaved in front of the Chief Justice, a rare incident in modern Pakistani history
4. First Blow To The Plan: when Chief Justice Chaudhry summoned both his son and tycoon Malik Riaz
5. Second Blow To The Plan: When Chief Justice referred the case of his son, Malik Riaz and his business partner Ahmed Khalil, also a buddy of the Prime Minister, to the government for probe and punishment
6. Malik Riaz recently paid Rs. 140 million [a little over one million dollars] to Somali pirates to release Pakistani sailors on government request. Why is tycoon Malik Riaz concerned about wasting Rs. 340 million in bribes to the son of the Chief Justice to buy his father’s favor, which never came?
7. ‘In his high-roller power games, giving away hundreds of millions of rupees to politicians, generals, bureaucrats, and dirty journalists is business as usual for him. So why the fuss over a measly Rs. 340 million?’, asks Mohammad Malick
8. Malik Riaz might have been offered a senior public office, possibly as an interim Prime Minister or governor of Punjab, in exchange for risking his name and business in the get-the-chief-justice plan
9. Zardari and Nawaz promised to appoint Malik Riaz as Punjab governor in their charter-of-democracy agreement but reneged when the agreement fell
10. “Public office may forever remain a pipe dream for an individual who had the audacity to justify, in a televised interview, that he offered bribes and illegal gratifications to conduct routine business in Pakistan. That he has been intelligently used is now quite obvious and it’s only a matter of time before the real players get exposed,” Malick writes
11. About 60 judges refused to join Gen. Musharraf’s attempt to remove the Chief Justice. This time probably none of the judges will join the government’s bid to remove the chief judge