A senior military officer from General Zia-ul-government Haq’s is among the people named in a data leak at Credit Suisse, the world’s largest bank.
The vast amount of data dubbed the ‘Credit Suisse leak’ or ‘Suisse secrets,’ was the consequence of a whistle-blower providing sensitive banking data to a German newspaper. The information reveals the secret wealth of global elite clients implicated in drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption.
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international network of journalists, estimated that the accounts identified in the leak were worth almost $8 billion.
The information comes from accounts that were open from 1940 to 2010. The sons of former Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence General Akhtar Abdul Rehman are among those whose account data has been leaked.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, General Akhtar Rehman oversaw the country’s top intelligence agency and assisted in the channeling of finances from the US and other countries to the Afghan Mujahideen.
According to a piece in The New York Times titled ‘Vast leak exposes how Credit Suisse supported strongmen and spies,’ an account was opened in the names of three of General Akhtar’s sons in 1985 during the Afghan conflict. The general, however, was never charged with stealing money, according to the newspaper. It went on to say that the account had grown to $3.7 million over the years.
Furthermore, the OCCRP report confirmed that Saudi Arabian and American finance for the Afghan Mujahideen battling the USSR would be channeled through a Swiss bank account controlled by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The Pakistani ISI, which was directed by General Akhtar Rehman at the time, was the final recipient of this procedure, according to the study.
The OCCRP report also stated that on July 1, 1985, an account, one of two Credit Suisse accounts controlled jointly by three of the general’s sons, was made operational.
It was also at this time that Ronald Reagan, the then-US president, expressed reservations about where the humanitarian money for the mujahideen was going.
By 2003, the joint account had grown to $3.7 million in worth, while another account, controlled entirely by one of General Akhtar’s sons, had grown to $9.2 million in value by November 2010.
Two of the general’s sons did not reply to demands for comment, while one of them called the facts in the study “not correct,” according to the OCCRP investigation.
