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Archive for category Nawaz Dangerous

Close to the Dead End, Sharifs Out to blow the system by Shaheen Sehbai

Posted by admin in Nawaz Dangerous, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, NAWAZ SHARIF SAGA OF ABSOLUTE & CHRONIC CORRUPTION, Nawaz Sharif Scams, RIGGED ELECTION 2013 on February 26th, 2018

ISLAMABAD INSIGHT Close to the Dead End, Sharifs Out to blow the system

Shaheen Sehbai 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I AM happy to write this in Calibri font, as it is not illegal anymore. But this piece can only be written in this font because it deals with issues created by the illegal use of Calibri. While my media friends are chilling out, watching Najam Sethi’s PSL and cruising on calm warm waters around Dubai, the political temperature and the battle between institutions back home has almost reached the boiling point, or the dead end. After what has happened, and is happening, the policy of judicial restraint and strict non-interference by the military and security establishment has stretched so thin, it can snap any time. The salient features of the present picture include: – After Nawaz Sharif has been legally sidelined, his ambitious and energetic bro in Lahore is now stuck neck deep in a swirling mass of quicksand, sinking deeper by the day, nay hour. – His open support and instigation to a revolt by the Lahori bureaucrats has almost wiped out his chances of becoming the next leader of the country. – Nawaz himself has conceded defeat by saying he is sure to get convicted in the few remaining corruption cases. So his policy is: After Me, the deluge. – He has unleashed his defiant daughter but she is also in the same boat and will sink together with his dad. – The NAB, backed fully by the Supreme Court and the armed forces, has launched a frontal and direct offensive in Punjab, ending its policy of passive restraint. – As all of these institutions are on the right side of the law, NAB has been threatened and challenged by provincial government, which in fact should have been helping the NAB to catch the corrupt. It is just the reverse and untenable. – After Shahbaz’s hitman Cheema was arrested, the next in line is Nawaz’s right-hand man Fawad Hasan Fawad and he is reported to have joined a gathering of protesting baboos in Lahore through a video conference. – PM Abbasi flew direct from his TAPI visit to Lahore to huddle with Shahbaz and nothing about their meeting was said. – They could, however, have discussed only two things. PM telling CM to stop the Punjab baboos revolt or PM agreeing to CM’s demand that same strategy should be adopted in Islamabad. Both are a no-win prospect. – The embedded perversity in this situation is that those in government are rising in revolt against their own authority. If the revolt persists, Shahbaz government sinks deeper into dirt. If the same happens in Islamabad, Abbasi would subvert himself. – With the political prism standing on its head, lop-sided, it does not need even a nudge to overturn it. – The last push could be coming from Islamabad where reports of a presidential ordinance to clip the powers of NAB are being considered. That may be the last nail, if one was needed. – If that happens, the Supreme Court will immediately come into action. The deadlock will deepen further, the swirling mud pond more stinky. – The joke now being perpetrated as Senate elections may also be swept aside by the Courts or makes the Upper House look ludicrous. – Every political initiative, based on negative intent and perverse logic will have failed. In such a scenario, with Punjab government deadlocked, Centre not responding to correct the wrong, all institutions fighting each other, there will be no way out but for the Supreme Court to invoke Article 190 and ask the armed forces to intervene in whatever shape and manner was deemed necessary. In Punjab this quiet intervention has already happened with Rangers taking over security of NAB headquarters where Cheema was kept. The obvious threat was not from anyone but the Punjab Police and other security departments. In short an internal subversive threat. The catch in this situation is that Nawaz has been asking for such an intervention by his provocations and stinging attacks on other institutions. The policy of restraint did not allow him to claim victimhood so far. Now the institutions have moved on as the final verdict declaring Nawaz and family as convicted criminals is almost ready to come. That probably was the deadline for the institutions to pursue the restraint. Now it is time to show some teeth. The few remaining days may even see a more desperate Nawaz and his family committing more shocking attacks on the institutions. A physical attack on the Supreme Court or the NAB court could also be anticipated. Surely it would be prevented. The bigger failure is that the political system has failed to stop any of these violators from thinking irrationally and for the larger cause of keeping democracy running. All other parties could have joined in a roundtable to advise Nawaz and family not to destroy everything. But they are so deeply divided they have lost the capacity to think even about their own future. Some parties are crying wolf, shouting loud but if Nawaz succeeds in carrying out a suicide attack on the political system, all parties will lose.
2018-02-26

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Disastrous decade of democracy sorry state of the state-Al Pakistan by Simon Templar

Posted by admin in CORRUPT ROGUE NAWAZ SHARIF, Ishaq Dar Financial Criminal, Looters and Scam Artists, Nawaz Dangerous, Nawaz Sharif & Kashmiri Biradari, Nawaz Sharif :Abbaji Da Nikama Puttur.", Nawaz Sharif Dangerous Man, Nawaz Sharif Malcontent, NAWAZ SHARIF SAGA OF ABSOLUTE & CHRONIC CORRUPTION, Nawaz Sharif Scams, Nawaz Sharif's Petrol Hoarding Money Making Scam, Panamagate, PMLN Choor, RIGGED ELECTION 2013, Western Intelligence Agents-Nawaz Sharif & Pervez Rasheed on September 12th, 2017

Disastrous decade of democracy sorry state of the state-Al Pakistan

by

Simon Templar

Thug life is a term used by gangsters to glorify their law breaking,heady crime sprees.

Nothing describes the misrule of two successive, so called democratically elected governments in the unstable, underdeveloped 200 million strong south Asian state of Pakistan.

How thieves, plunderers and freebooters came to rule this nuclear armed state is a sad tale in itself.

Ruled by military General Pervez Musharraf who took over in a military coup in 1999, the country became a close US ally after 9/11 and witnessed an era of growth and stability under military rule.

However when Musharaf reached his limits of flexibility, it was decided by the US and British to force him bring back the two tainted, condemned political leaders in exile and to wash away all their sins under a dubious order in the name of national reconciliation.

As in the Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, there was also a hungry, eager, more flexible General waiting in the Wings to replace him, and Deputy Chief Kayani used Military intelligence and a judges restoration movement to cripple the erstwhile strongman, now out of favor with the US.

A final thumbs down from the US Ambassador compelled Musharraf to resign and after the mysterious, unsolved murder of Benazir Bhutto, her thuggish husband, the upstart, criminal uneducated, corrupt and much reviled Asif Zardari came to power.

The deal with the West was that we bring you back, wash away your past sins and you squeeze the Army.

The game began and new Chief Kayani turned a blind eye, as he had brought the devil to sup at the table and was also busy improving his impoverished families financial condition.

So well did this team work that General Kayani got an unprecedented 3 year second term, Zardari became a billionaire, Kayani from rags to millionaire and the country went to the dogs.

The US with its two boys in place, in charge of the Presidency and military, violated Pakistani sovereignty and physical boundaries at will, using drones, choppers, covert assassin’s and whatever they chose.

As per the unholy charter of kleptocracy, Sharif kept silent during Zardari’s plunder and he returned the favor after Sharif took over in 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simple math, over invoice $ 50 billion of Chinese funded projects-whether needed or not- by ten percent, sign sovereign guarantees, leave future generations to pay off horrifying debts and pocket 5% off the top!

Walk away with a cool $ 2.5 billion dollars.Astonishingly simple as it is audacious.

Where Zardari was a street thug, looting millions, for ing neighbors to sell their properties on the cheap, the plunderers from Punjab, whose father made pots and cooking utensils with his bare hands are now certified dollar billionaires thanks to massive bank defaults,and international cuts commissions and kickbacks.

Wow! Wonderful, just one mistake…Sharif, egged on by vicious anti military Advisers like Junior Minister for Foreign Affairs Syed Tariq Fatimi, kept on targeting the by now restive and powerful Pakistan military.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leakage of information pertaining to thousands of offshore companies incorporated in Panama signalled the end for the strangely absent Sharif regime.

Perhaps the most corrupt and worse administered government in the history of Pakistan..certainly the most hypocritical.

Destroying the civil service structure, promoting nepotism, turning state servants especially in the Punjab into glorified pimps and facilitators.

 

Nawaz Sharif ‘s Well Hidden Taliban Connection-Taliban did Nawaz Sharif’s Dirty Work-While, US looked the Other Way-Rana Sanaulla, Nawaz Sharif’s  Killer Interior Minister Connected to Punjabi Taliban

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One poor martied lady was famously peddled by her husband out to Sharif, then his younger brother and in turn was rewarded with top administrative positions for his immoral shamelessness.

Functioning without statutory, mandated positions such as State Ombudsman, National Tax Collector, Head of the Audit Service and even without the Governor of the State Bank.

Burgeoning debt,increasingly hostile borders, declining exports, a dysfunctional government, falling stock market and collapsing currency could not shake Sharif out of his stupor.

On the ropes, with his family corruption the main story in every paper, every channel and on social media, he chose to plod on shamelessly, trying one corrupt lawyer after another in a futile attempt to cover his tracks.

Described as a sicilian mafiosi by the worthy judges of the top constitutional court, Sharif scraped the bottom of the barrel, hiring the immoral Raja Salman Akram, known to have defended Zardaris drug dealing Prime Minister, all to no avail.

Functioning without a Foreign minister for four years, and appointing idiots as top envoys, the joke is on Sharif as he is now left with no friends to bail him out as before.

His Saudi patrons distanced themselves from their pet poodle after Sharif was unable to prevail upon his military who very sensibly refused to go and fight alongside Saudi troops in Yemen.

Indians and Americans have realised he cannot dominate his military and the Turks and Chinese know him and his tribe as crooked, slimy money grabbers.

Despite holding office for years, Sharif has paid no attention to healthcare, education, rule of law or job creation, focusing purely on shady, unnecessary projects providing easy kickbacks.

Now decades of money laundering, defaulted bank loans and millions in off shore accounts and overseas properties stand to be exposed for what they are, the loot and plunder from 190 million poor uneducated helpless souls who are forced to sell or kill their children due to lack of justice, poverty and a gloomy future.

The question is how will things unfold? Will the shameless, immoral, hypocritical kleptocrats escape yet again to lick their wounds and enjoy their boots abroad or shall they deservedly meet the fate of another erstwhile billionaire, the late unlamented Colonel Qaddafi who died bloodied and screaming in the street as his engeful subjects beat him to death?

The author is a geostrategist based in Brussels.

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Ruin comes when… HUZAIMA BUKHARI AND DR IKRAMUL HAQ

Posted by jahanzeb in CORRUPT ROGUE NAWAZ SHARIF, Ishaq Dar Financial Criminal, Kulsoom Nawaz:Pholan Devi of Pakistan, Nawaz Dangerous, Nawaz Sharif Dangerous Man, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, NAWAZ SHARIF LOAN SCAM, Nawaz Sharif Malcontent, Nawaz Sharif Massive Corruption, Nawaz Sharif's Petrol Hoarding Money Making Scam, RAW SPIES IN NAWAZ SHARIF EMPLOYMENT on April 15th, 2017

 

 

Ruin comes when…

By
HUZAIMA BUKHARI AND DR IKRAMUL HAQ

 

 

 

Ruin comes when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler-Plato in Republic Since November 1990, when Muhammad Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister of Pakistan for the first time, the culture of loot, plunder, corruption, tax evasion and money laundering was legalised through obnoxious laws like Protection of Economic Reforms Act, 1992 and its likes giving a free hand to criminals that no question would be asked by tax officials and functionaries of Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) for acquiring and using dirty money. His three stints as Prime Minister and years as a minister and chief minister in the Punjab can safely be labeled as “rule of a trader” whose heart is infested with the insatiable greed of amassing wealth, expanding family-owned business empire at the expense of the national exchequer and other business houses. This fact was also noted by a judge of High Court in a reported case details of which are summarized below:

In Messrs Pak Ocean and Others v Government of Pakistan through Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Central Secretariat, Islamabad and others 2002 PTD 2850, the petitioners challenged the imposition of regulatory duty on re-meltable iron scrap, excluding bundled and shredded scrap and the reduction in the rate of duty on bundled and shredded scrap as unlawful, arbitrary, unreasonable and ultra vires Articles 4, 18, 24 and 25 of the Constitution. They contended that the said imposition of regulatory duty through Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO) was aimed at making their imported scrap very expensive as compared to the imports by big businessmen in the form of bundled and shredded scrap. According to petitioners, the adverse SROs were issued “to solely benefit the owners of the furnaces who are largely imported of shredded scrap”. In the judgment, there is a direct indictment against the House of Sharifs, contained in Para 50 that reads as under:

Khalid Anwar has mainly placed reliance on the judgment in the case of Ittefaq Foundry v. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 1990 Lahore 121. In the cited case it was contended that the petitioner was a producer of billets and that there were other producers, producing ingots, the end-product whereof was same. In order to economically ruin the petitioner in the cited case, duty structure was changed in the year 1989 without reasonable justification and the change in the duty structure was against the rights guaranteed in Articles 4, 18 and 25 of the Constitution. The contention of the petitioner was accepted and the relief was allowed. However, with the change in fortunes, the persons were feeling the pinch of oppression in the case of Ittefaq Foundry v. Federation of Pakistan, became the rulers and thereafter, they very easily and conveniently managed to forge the treatment given to them and got the duty structure changed through notification assailed in these petitions, thereby deriving huge undue benefit at the cost of total destruction of the small importers and traders of the scrap in loose form.

The above paragraph confirms beyond any doubt how traders as rulers have been playing havoc with the national exchequer and minting billions through tax concessions secured vide SROs thus destroying their competitors. Yet in the presence of these undeniable facts and court ruling the State agencies/institutions like FBR, FIA, ECP, NAB etc plead helplessness and claiming “lack of evidence” to proceed against the tax evaders and plunderers of national wealth.

 

 

 

In two articles, ‘Trail of hidden wealth’, Business Recorder, May 6, 2016 and ‘Tough times for PM’, Business Recorder, May 13, 2016, incontrovertible evidence was produced to show abuse of Protection of Economic Reforms Act, 1992 to legalise ill-gotten wealth, blatant violations of tax laws by the family of the Prime Minister and wrong declarations made by him in papers submitted to the Elections Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in 2013 as well as false/misdeclarations in returns submitted to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). Astonishingly, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) still claims that “no evidence” is available to initiate proceedings against the rulers of the day.

 

 

 

The House of Sharifs has a proven track record of destroying competitive business houses but appeasing traders that politically back them and pose no threat to their “empire”. They have been passing laws to protect tax avoiders and were also beneficiaries of the same. Obviously, tax compliance does not suit the huge business empire of Nawaz/Shahbaz and family. It is not surprising that Nawaz Sharif during his third term as Prime Minister has already announced three tax amnesty schemes and now another is in the offing. In 2013, 2015 and 2016, he approved tax amnesties for tax evaders, which failed to mop up untaxed money.

On the very first day of 2016, the Prime Minister took pride in announcing a tax amnesty scheme and publically revealed that he had been asking his Finance Minister to come up with something “worthwhile” that could be “acceptable” to traders who had not been filing tax returns!! Lamentably, as Prime Minister, he openly vowed to protect the accumulation of untaxed (black) money. He never minces words for announcing schemes patronizing tax evaders and encouraging plunder of national wealth. This perhaps supports the allegations of the Opposition that he and his own family are guilty of these crimes as well, so he wants amnesty and immunities for all.

Nawaz Sharif is reportedly keen to launch yet another tax amnesty scheme knowing that his 2013 tax amnesty shockingly fetched a negligible amount of Rs 88 million from about 3000 persons! Much-publicised and negotiated with consensus (sic) Voluntary Tax Amnesty for traders, the deadline for which was extended many times, could not lure them and only 3205 got registered against the agreed target of one million new filers!

Businessmen and other citizens say they pay income tax and sales tax with electricity bills and mobile use. The rulers should not insist for tax returns as they have stacked assets worth billions of dollars abroad. For electioneering, the rulers get generous donations (chanda) from business magnates and after winning pay back through tax amnesties. Together they make billions through rent-seeking, tax evasion, and remit abroad the major portion of such ill-gotten income. Traders who have been investing billions in property in Pakistan and places like Dubai never bother to pay taxes due from them to run the State. PML(N) protects them!

According to FBR’s own study, the contribution of traders in income tax is just 0.5% and in sales tax about 1%. Like powerful absentee landlords, the traders pay meager income tax. However, they successfully keep revenue authorities at bay due to the powerful political influence they wield. The history of income tax law is fraught with provisions that were amended and/or re-amended on account of the traders’ shutter-down threats or violent demonstrations, causing legislators to get cold feet and succumbing to their demands. The governments civil and military alike have been extending amnesty schemes to tax evaders to whiten their undeclared incomes and ill-gotten wealth, for example, Ayub Khan’s Tax Amnesty Scheme of 1958, 1969 Tax Amnesty of Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Tax Amnesty, Self-Assessment Schemes of the 1970s, Special National Fund Bonds or Simplified Self-Assessment Scheme of the 1980s, Foreign Currency Accounts or Foreign Exchange Bearer Certificates of the 1990s, Amnesty Scheme of 2008 by PPP government, three amnesties schemes of Nawaz-Dar since 2013, various other millennium immunity schemes and the perpetual scheme in the form of the infamous section 111(4) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.

Irrespective of what would be the fate of any new tax amnesty scheme, the question that emanates from the prevalent bizarre state of affairs is why traders have been defiant to file tax returns and sales tax statements? There cannot be any one definitive answer because the matter goes down to innumerable factors having roots in certain motivations as well as the draconian image of FBR. The sole responsibility for trust deficit cannot be assigned to FBR. The traders pay millions as Zakat and donations but abhor paying taxes. The general argument is that government spends money callously and for the benefit of elites.

The sanctity to make unrestrained (excessive) profits (munafaa) by traders has the authority of certain clerics. The traders borrow money at exorbitant rates from private parties but avoid banks to hide from the eyes of tax people. The lenders also remain tax-free and borrowers accumulate untaxed money by fleecing masses. There are no effective controls to check unscrupulous traders from charging unreasonable prices.

The clergy in general, with a few exceptions, plead against paying taxes and ask traders to pay Zakat. Resultantly, the greed to amass wealth becomes an obsession violating all social and moral obligations. Thus, adulterating eatables, incorrect measurements, selling defective or sub-standard products, misrepresenting, providing unprofessional services, defrauding customers, refusing to honor guarantees or other duties as abiding by governmental laws regarding trade or payment of taxes, are not considered immoral or violating laws.

All is fair, as long as one is able to stuff one’s pockets with paper money and then have the audacity to squander it in an ostentatious display of wealth and power. Such behavior is visible in the length and breadth of our entire society. Apart from an ignorable number, the majority of traders from a petty fruit/vegetable vendor to the owner of large departmental stores leave no stone unturned to swindle an unassuming customer as well as the concerned government agents with whose connivance they easily manage to evade their national duties.

Non-compliance of tax obligation is a grim reality of Pakistan. The State has failed to fulfill its basic obligations-protection of life and property, health, education, housing and transport etc. In our peculiar milieu, the government needs to educate the masses through the same platform that is used by clergy. The mosques should be under state control, headed by trained teachers who are adequately paid the same model exists in a majority of Muslim countries. Primary education should start from the mosques.

The trader-mullah nexus for non-payment of taxes and huge amounts extracted for madrassahs are issues that need to be debated and handled democratically. These are critical for our existence as a democratic country lest we continuously slide towards mullocracy, extremism, and militancy that have disastrous effects for societies, and are destructive to humanity. Tax defiance and corruption in Pakistan are closely linked with rulers-cum-traders-who are unscrupulous and their greed is unbound. Plato aptly said in the Republic that ruin comes for a country when traders whose hearts are filled with greed become rulers. This is what we are witnessing in today’s Pakistan.

(The writers, lawyers, and partners in Huzaima, Ikram & Ijaz, are Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).)

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Pakistan Corruption Free Or Free For Corruption – Cartoon The Nation

Posted by Sohaib in Corruption, Corruption in Islamic Countries, CORRUPTION OF SHAHBAZ SHARIF, CROOKS, Kulsoom Nawaz:Pholan Devi of Pakistan, Nawaz Dangerous, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, NAWAZ SHARIF LOAN SCAM, Nawaz Sharif Malcontent, Nawaz Sharif Massive Corruption, Nawaz Sharif's Petrol Hoarding Money Making Scam, Serial Killers Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Western Intelligence Agents-Nawaz Sharif & Pervez Rasheed on April 10th, 2017

Panama decision will also be a verdict on Corruption in Pakistan

Either Pakistan will be Corruption Free Or Free For Corruption

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Prosecutor Pushes for Indictment of South Korean President in Samsung Scandal

Posted by Wesley in Corruption Among World Leaders, KASHMIRI NAWAZ SHARIF & PMLN MNA/MPA KANJAR KHANA, Kulsoom Nawaz:Pholan Devi of Pakistan, Nawaz Dangerous, Nawaz Sharif & Kashmiri Biradari, NAWAZ SHARIF BUZDIL KARGIL BHAGHORA, Nawaz Sharif Dangerous Man, NAWAZ SHARIF DICTATOR, NAWAZ SHARIF FAMILY TURPITUDE, Nawaz Sharif US Agent, NAWAZ SHARIF US CIA ASSET IN PAKISTAN, Nawaz Sharif-The Prime Minister from Hell, Pakistan's Hall of Shame, RAW SPIES IN NAWAZ SHARIF EMPLOYMENT, Western Intelligence Agents-Nawaz Sharif & Pervez Rasheed on March 7th, 2017

S.Korea Prosecutor Ready to Indict Impeached President Ms.Park:

Pakistan Supreme Court Sits on Nawaz Sharif Panama Case Judgement 

Prosecutor Pushes for Indictment of South Korean President in Samsung Scandal

FEB. 28, 2017

Image result for president park south korea impeachment

Ms. Park’s presidential powers have been suspended since the impeachment vote in December. The Constitutional Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks on whether she should be reinstated or formally removed from office. Even if she resumes the presidency, her five-year term ends in February, after which she can face criminal charges.

On Monday, Ms. Park’s lawyer, Yu Young-ha, rejected the special prosecutor’s findings, saying his investigation was “politically biased” and “lacking in fairness.” He called the bribery allegation “an absurd fiction.”

But on Monday, Mr. Park, the special prosecutor, who is not related to Ms. Park, said his team found enough evidence that Ms. Park and her confidante, Choi Soon-sil, conspired to collect bribes from Samsung.

Image result for president park south korea impeachment

On Feb. 28, he indicted Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation scion of the family that runs Samsung, on charges of giving or promising $38 million in bribes to Ms. Park and Ms. Choi. He also added a bribery charge to the case against Ms. Choi, who is already on trial.

Mr. Lee offered the bribes in return for political favors from Ms. Park, most notably government support for a merger of two Samsung affiliates in 2015 that helped him inherit corporate control of the Samsung conglomerate from his incapacitated father, Lee Kun-hee, the prosecutor said.

Acting on Ms. Park’s order, her aides forced the government-controlled National Pension Service, a major shareholder at the two Samsung companies, to vote for the merger, though it was opposed by many minority shareholders and devalued the pension fund’s own stocks there, the prosecutor said.

A protest against President Park in Seoul on Saturday. The special prosecutor also said that Ms. Park should face a criminal charge of abusing official power over a blacklist of artists. Jung Ui-Chel/European Pressphoto Agency

On Monday, Samsung denied the special prosecutor’s findings.

“Samsung has not paid bribes nor made improper requests seeking favors,” it said in a statement. “Future court proceedings will reveal the truth.”

On Monday, Mr. Park, the special prosecutor, said that the president should also face a criminal charge of abusing official power, saying she conspired with aides to blacklist thousands of artists, writers, and movie directors deemed unfriendly to her government and exclude them from government-funded support programs.

Ms. Park also fired three senior Culture Ministry officials who had been reluctant to discriminate against some of the 9,473 names on the list, the prosecutor said. She demoted and later fired another senior ministry official who had angered Ms. Choi, her friend, by investigating allegations of corruption involving her family, the prosecutor said.

While blackballing unfriendly artists, Ms. Park’s office ensured that pro-government civic groups received special favors, he said.

It asked the Federation of Korean Industries, which lobbies on behalf of Samsung and other big businesses, to provide $5.9 million for those groups between 2014 and 2016, the special prosecutor said. Some of those groups, like the right-wing Korea Parent Federation, have held noisy protests in downtown Seoul calling the critics of Ms. Park “commies.”

Besides Samsung, scores of other South Korean companies were found to have made payments to two foundations controlled by Ms. Choi. But on Monday, the special prosecutor did not recommend further actions against them, and state prosecutors had earlier said that those companies were coerced to donate and were not engaged in bribery.

Ms. Park has repeatedly denied any legal wrongdoing, insisting that she was framed by hostile political forces and that she was not aware of any criminal conspiracy by Ms. Choi. She said she only let Ms. Choi edit some of her speeches and run her personal errands.

On Monday, the special prosecutor said Ms. Park and Ms. Choi had 573 phone conversations between April and October last year using cell phones issued under borrowed names. Of these calls, 127 took place between September, when Ms. Choi left for Germany, and October when she returned home to be arrested.

The prosecutor accused Ms. Park of impeding his investigation. She refused to be questioned by his investigators and also did not allow them to search her office. As a result, he said his team could not fully determine what she was doing at her residence for seven hours in April 2014, when a ferry loaded with hundreds of schoolchildren sank, killing more than 300.

Ms. Park said she was working at the time, getting reports on the disaster. But she has been haunted by lurid rumors, some of them claiming that she was having a romantic encounter or undergoing plastic surgery.

On Monday, the prosecutor said a cosmetic surgeon gave Ms. Park at least five simple face-lifting operations at her residence between 2013 and 2016. Even unlicensed people visited her there to give her nutritional shots and help her with kinesiotherapy and reiki, a form of traditional healing. But investigators could not find evidence that such things took place on the day of the ferry disaster.

Reference

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