Imran indicted, Pakistan burns; rupee falls all-time low to 287.29 vs $

Default risk grows, IMF deal may be delayed as court indicts Khan, sends him to 8-day custody

Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan was on Wednesday sent on an eight-day remand to the anti-corruption watchdog while a sessions court indicted him in a separate graft case, amid violent protests that left at least seven people dead and prompted deployment of the army in three provinces.
 

Pakistan is edging closer to a default as political unrest sparked by the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan is set to delay an International Monetary Fund bailout.
 

“It looks increasingly difficult for Pakistan to avoid a default in the absence of fresh funding support coming in,” said Eng Tat Low, an emerging-market sovereign analyst at Columbia Threadneedle Investments in Singapore. Dollar bonds due 2031 fell to the lowest since November on Wednesday, trading at 33.85 cents on the dollar. 
 

 

The 70-year-old chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was taken into custody by the paramilitary Rangers on Tuesday on the orders of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) by barging into a room of the Islamabad High Court.

On Wednesday, Khan was produced in the Anti-Accountability Court No. 1 presided by judge Muhammad Bashir, the same judge who had convicted former premier Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam in a corruption case of having properties in London.
 

Judge Bashir reserved the judgment at the conclusion of arguments. Later on announcing the verdict, the court handed over Khan for eight day to the NAB.

At the start of the hearing, the NAB lawyers requested the court to grant a 14-day remand of Khan to probe the allegations against him in the Al-Qadir Trust case in which he is accused of looting Rs 50 billion of the national treasury. But Khan’s lawyer opposed the plea and asked the judge to release him as the charges were fabricated.
 

In his statement, Khan told the accountability court that he was fearful for his life, the Express Tribune newspaper reported.

“I have not been to the washroom in 24 hours,” he said.
 

“I am afraid I will meet the same fate as ‘Maqsood Chaprasi’,” Khan said, referring to a witness in Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's money laundering case who died due to a cardiac arrest last year. Khan’s party had termed the witness’ death ‘mysterious’.
 

Violent clashes between Imran Khan’s supporters and security forces in the last 24 hours have left at least seven people dead and nearly 300 others injured across Pakistan as the army was deployed in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces on Wednesday to maintain law and order.
 

At least 14 government buildings/installations were set on fire by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party supporters in Punjab province following the dramatic arrest of Khan in a corruption case on Tuesday, police said. The law enforcement agencies have arrested 1,150 PTI supporters including women in Punjab alone so far. Two top leaders - PTI Secretary General Asad Umar, former Punjab governor Omar Sarfraz Cheema and PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi - were also arrested on Wednesday.
 

PTI Senior Vice President Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Secretary General Asad Umar went to the Islamabad High Court to file a plea against the police decision to stop them from seeing Khan. Pakistan Army on Wednesday warned former prime minister Imran Khan’s supporters that will not allow anyone to take the law into their hands, describing May 9 as a “black chapter" in the country's history in the wake of attacks on its installations.

“We will not allow anyone to take the law into their hands,” the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Army’s media wing said in a terse statement.
 

World turns cautious
 

The United States, United Kingdom, and Canada have released updated travel warnings for their citizens due to political turmoil in Pakistan after the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, ARY News reported. 
 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday said that the arrest of former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was an internal matter of the country, but that the UK was monitoring the situation carefully. 
 

Asked about the ongoing “civil unrest”  in the country by Pakistan-born Conservative Party MP Rehman Chishti during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons, Sunak responded by describing the UK-Pakistan bilateral relations as “long-standing and close”.

Pakistan rupee falls all-time low at 287.29 vs $

The Pakistani rupee fell 1.3 per cent to a record low of 288.5 against the US dollar on Wednesday, a day after former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested by the anti-corruption agency in Islamabad. Pakistan’s international bonds nudged lower with the 2024 issue down 0.4 cents on the dollar, according to Tradeweb data. The bonds trade at deeply distressed levels between 49 cents on the dollar for shorter-dated maturities while longer-dated ones changed hand at around 33 cents.