Corruption is not the reason Pakistan’s former prime minister had to go to prison
was tame. On August 5th a court in Islamabad, the capital, convicted the ex-prime minister of “corrupt practices” in a case involving state gifts. Mr Khan was sentenced to three years in prison and later barred from politics for five years. The court found he had breached electoral laws by making false declarations about the value of gifts from foreign dignitaries which he sold on for his own benefit during his time in office. Mr Khan denies any wrongdoing and has lodged an appeal .
Whether or not Mr Khan is guilty, he probably has a point. Corruption penetrates all levels of business and government in Pakistan, which ranks 140th out of 180 countries in a corruption-perceptions index compiled by Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog. Yet it is rarely prosecuted with any seriousness unless the accused has fallen foul of Pakistan’s government or the powerful army, whose heavy involvement in politics and business is one of the main sources of corruption.
Mr Khan fits that mould. Before he was removed from office in a vote of no confidence in April 2022, he styled himself as a pious anti-corruption crusader. It was his political opponents who then found themselves under investigation., now the prime minister, and members of his family were indicted in a money-laundering case in 2020; Mr Sharif spent eight months in prison before being awarded bail.
When Mr Sharif took over from Mr Khan, the tables turned. In July an anti-corruption court acquitted Mr Sharif and his co-accused of all charges in the money-laundering case. Meanwhile the court that sent Mr Khan to prison handed down the maximum sentence possible under a law that is rarely enforced. The former prime minister will continue to face legal troubles even if his appeal is successful.
It is possible that not all of these cases are entirely spurious. Mr Khan is prone to rabble-rousing and some think he was not above using the legal system against opponents while he was in power. Yet the salient point about most of them is a different one. Prosecuting even a few will entangle him in legal proceedings for years, thwarting his return to politics.
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