Pak. claims new evidence on Bhuttos' dream house

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, SEPT. 2. It was to have been a dream house complete with a ``stud, a nine- hole golf course and a paddock for polo ponies'', not to mention marble bathrooms and a bomb-proof master bedroom. But the Zardaris never got to live there; they even deny it is theirs.

This week, however, Pakistani authorities claim to have unearthed new ``evidence'' to prove that the £5-million Rockwood House, a sprawling mansion in Surrey, indeed belonged to Pakistan's former first family - Ms. Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari. The latter is alleged to have bought it with ``kickbacks'' on business deals when he was a Minister in his wife's government, though Ms. Bhutto insists she has no knowledge of it.

A number of artefacts, including gifts which the couple received when they were in power, have been found in Rockwood House and handed over to the Pakistan High Commission here. A spokesman of the High Commission today confirmed this to The Hindu after The Guardian ran a story captioned `Mystery mansion traced to Bhuttos'.

It quoted a High Commission official as saying:``If the house did not belong to the Bhuttos, it's hard to understand why these personal belongings were there. Some of the artefacts appear to be gifts given to them when they were in power.''

Mr. Paul Keating, a building contractor, is reported to have told Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau that he was in charge of refurbishing Rockwood House after Mr. Zardari acquired it. He said he was told by Mr. Zardari that he was preparing the house for ``BB''. According to him, the artefacts which included a gift to Mr. Zardari from ``Wilkinson's Swords'', came from a property owned by the Bhuttos in Karachi.

``Shortly before Mrs. Bhutto was deposed, Mr. Keating was ordered to remove everything from the house. Payment for the building work stopped abruptly. Mr. Keating says he is owed £5,00,000'', The Guardian said. The refurbishment was on a lavish scale, with curtains for the nine bedrooms alone costing £50,000, Mr. Keating estimated.

The newspaper said that an American lawyer, Mr. William Pepper, who was advising prosecutors in Pakistan, claimed there was ``overwhelming evidence'' to pin the ownership of the mansion and a ``number of other substantial homes'' in London on Mr. Zardari.

The money with which these properties were bought ``rightfully belongs to the Government of Pakistan'', he told The Guardian from New York. ``There is no doubt that the Rockwood property was bought by Mr. Zardari. There is no doubt at all,'' he said, describing the artefacts found at Rockwood House as ``significant items of evidence''.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : U.S. flexible on Chinese missile build-up?
Next     : 'Racism meet not right forum for social
           engineering'