GENEVA, 20 September 2005 — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday faced Swiss justice officials who are probing allegations that she laundered millions of dollars in bribes.
Benazir, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, said she was cooperating fully with Geneva investigators.
Ahead of the hearing, she told reporters that Pakistani authorities were trying to make political capital out of the case, claiming that some circles in her homeland were against powerful woman.
Benazir, who has been under Swiss investigation since 1997, was formally charged last year over the alleged money-laundering of $11.7 million in purported bribes paid by companies seeking customs inspection contracts. She has said she is confident of clearing her name.
Benazir, who governed Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, lives in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai.
Her husband Asif Zardari, who has also been charged, was unable to attend the hearing because of ill health, a lawyer said.
Zardari, a former minister, was released from an eight-year detention in Pakistan last December after a court granted him bail in the last of a string of corruption and murder charges pending against him.
Several months ago he returned to Dubai.
Zardari had surgery after a heart attack in June, following a string of other health problems, and doctors have ordered him not to travel for at least six months, a lawyer said.
