Ex-ISI chief among Pakistani Generals who illegally stashed billions of dollars in Swiss bank

Christened as “Suisse secrets”, this huge leak of confidential banking data was provided by a whistleblower to a German newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. This data was analysed and organized by a wide network of working under the umbrella of Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

In another indictment of widespread corruption in the Pakistan Army, leaked data from Credit Suisse, a bank in Switzerland, has disclosed names of several Pakistani Generals who have/had held accounts stashed with illegally-gained wealth. Of the data disclosed, two accounts related to ex-ISI chief General Akhta Abdur Rahman Khan have been revealed.  

Christened as “Suisse secrets”, this huge leak of confidential banking data was provided by a whistleblower to a German newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. This data was analysed and organized by a wide network of working under the umbrella of Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). “Those who held accounts include spy chiefs and their relatives from Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan. Some have been accused of financial crimes, torture — or both,” the key findings of the OCCRP repost said.

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Two of the accounts disclosed are related to General Akhta Abdur Rahman Khan, the ex-ISI chief under the Zia-ul-Haq regime in Pakistan in the 1980s. Even though he kept a low profile, General Akhtar is said to be the brains behind funneling huge money to set up Mujahideen groups fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan since 1980.

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“As the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency, General Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan helped funnel billions of dollars in cash and other aid from the US and other countries to the mujahideen in Afghanistan to support their fight against the Soviet Union,” as per a report by The New York Times (NYT). The report further says that an account was opened in the name of all the three sons of General Akhtar. The account, which opened in 1985, “would grow to hold USD3.7 million (by 2003), the leaked records show,” the NYT report further read. “A second account, opened in January 1986 in Akbar’s name alone, was worth more than 9 million Swiss francs by November 2010 ($9.2 million at the time),” the OCCRP report disclosed.  

“Saudi Arabia matched U.S. funding to the jihadists dollar for dollar, often sending the money to the CIA’s Swiss bank account. The end recipient in the process was Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence group (ISI), led by Akhtar,” the OCCRP report read.

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“Akhtar was doing it to fill his own pockets…A lot of money was siphoned off from the Afghan war and into his bank accounts,” OCCRP quoted a South Asian intelligence source saying.

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General Akhtar died in a plane crash in Bahawalpur in Punjab, Pakistan in 1988 which claimed the life of his boss, General Zia-ul-Haq as well.  

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