The Hindu : Pakistani nuclear scientists' foreign accounts traced

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 26, 2004

International

International

Pakistani nuclear scientists' foreign accounts traced

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD, JAN. 25. The row over the alleged nuclear technology transfer by some Pakistani scientists is getting murkier. There is official acknowledgement for the first time that at least two scientists were involved in cooperation with Iran and foreign accounts used to deposit the proceeds from the transfer of technology have been traced.

Addressing editors at Davos, the Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, hinted two days ago that some of his country's scientists might have been involved in the transfer for personal greed. He also raised the involvement of some others from Europe and wondered why no was talking about them. It appears the foreign accounts of at two least Pakistani scientists were being operated through a Dubai-based bank.

"It is an open and shut case. Their foreign bank accounts swelled by millions of dollars as the sensitive information and some hardware reached Iran," claimed the Pakistani English daily, The News, quoting unnamed sources.

Iran has already confirmed the information about these bank accounts. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.S. also had details of the financial transactions that took place between the scientists and their Iranian sources.

Officials have also discovered that one of the main Dubai-based cover companies used by the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) to procure hundreds of millions dollars of equipment was being operated by a close relative of a top nuclear scientist.

Pakistani investigators have also unearthed that the scientist held tens of millions of dollars worth of direct and indirect financial and real estate holdings in Pakistan and abroad, mostly in Dubai, the paper said.

The report quoted sources as saying that the authorities have reversed an earlier decision to decorate the wife of Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered to be the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, with one of the highest civil awards of Pakistan.

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