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Zardari set to get 3 million pounds richer from sale
proceeds of Surrey Palace
London, Sept 22 (ANI): Only a few legal formalities are left after which newly‐elected
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari would pocket nearly three million pounds from the
Pakistani exchequer, the sale proceeds of Surrey Palace the Rockwood House ‐ which
was sold through a liquidator in 2004 after Zardari and his slain spouse Benazir Bhutto
were found guilty of corruption.
The total worth of the mansion today is estimated to be around 8.5 million pounds. That
sum (three million pounds) will add the fortune of Zardari, who had only last month
received 32 million pounds in frozen assets released to him by the Swiss authorities,
after Geneva prosecutors dropped the money‐laundering investigation against Zardari at
the request of the PPP‐led alliance government.
For more than 10 years, the mansion has been the symbol of corruption charges being
leveled against Zardari and his wife Benazir.
Spread over an area of 335 acres, the Palace was bought opaquely by the Bhutto‐Zardari
family in 1995 for 2.5 million pounds during Bhutto’s second term as prime minister. The
sale, handled by the Bhutto’s Swiss lawyer, Jens Schlegelmilch, was particularly opaque.
The money came from the Geneva bank accounts of shell companies registered offshore
in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.
The purchasers were three Isle of Man firms owned by two local trusts which in turn
were controlled by a foundation in Liechtenstein. Suspicions about the true owners
surfaced in 1996 with claims that the Bhutto’s could have got the estate from the
proceeds of corruption. It was one of the allegations that led to Bhutto being sacked as
prime minister and to Zardari being jailed on charges of corruption and complicity in the
murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, his wife’s brother.
A year later evidence of the Bhutto’s labyrinthine financial dealings came to light in
documents from Schlegelmilch’s Geneva office, which were sold to the government for a
reported USD 1m.
In 1998, the new Nawaz Sharif government got a freezing injunction in the Isle of Man
and in 2002 the companies went into voluntary liquidation. Two years later, the English
liquidator sold the estate to the current owner, a local businessman, for 4.3 million
pounds.
Pakistan started lengthy, expensive civil proceedings to reclaim what it argued was
stolen state money but for eight years Zardari and Bhutto denied they owned Rockwood
House ‐ despite the well‐publicised arrival of crates of luxurious artefacts, including a
stuffed Bengal tiger, from the Bhuttos” home in Karachi. Workers engaged on elaborate
renovations at the property claimed Zardari told them he also wanted a stud farm and
polo centre.
It was only in 2004, when Zardari was freed from jail without trial, that his lawyers
admitted, in an Isle of Man court, that he was the beneficial owner.
The case went to the high court in London and in 2006 Justice Collins declared there was
a “reasonable prospect” of Pakistan establishing that Bhutto or her husband, or the pair
together, bought and refurbished Rockwood with “the fruits of corruption”.
The case then did not progress, largely because of Zardari’s claims of ill health, issued
from his home on New York ‘’s Upper East Side. Medical reports to the court between
June 2005 and September last year declare that Zardari suffered from severe mental
health problems, including dementia, major depressive disorder and post‐traumatic
stress disorder.