Dial M for Moussavi.

Byline: Fahd Husain

HE'S the flavour of the month for all the wrong reasons. Which is exactly why one Mr Kaveh Moussavi has been so successful in fragrancing the Pakistani airwaves with delicious tales of financial skullduggery deep inside the bowels of our power corridors. But as tales go, this one too may have a twisted ending.

There is something about foreign-based, Pakistani-linked scandals that is hard to resist. Remember Memogate? A mysterious foreigner, some incriminating documents, a few well-calculated media leaks, wild political point-scoring, high officials travelling to distant shores for hush-hush meetings and state institutions jumping on the bandwagon to create a perfect storm that ended in a teacup.

Well, here we are all over again, all breathless with excitement and anticipation over another 'expose' that will prove something or the other for someone or the other. But wait. Stop. Take a take breath. Now, let's cut through clutter.

Moussavi has hit the airwaves like a man possessed.

Here's what we have been told so far: Gen Pervez Musharraf, soon after taking over, decided to trace Nawaz Sharif's wealth that he believed was stashed abroad. He tasked the newly formed NAB to do so. NAB contracted an organisation called Broadsheet - led by Moussavi and specialising in tracing hidden money - to find the stash. At some point NAB reneged on the contract. Broadsheet went to court. For many years there was silence. Then late into the previous Nawaz Sharif government, one heard that Broadsheet had won the case against Pakistan and was awarded nearly $28 million. While Moussavi was making efforts to get this amount from the Pakistani government, he told some Pakistani officials he had found out through his sources that a billion dollars had been moved from an account in Saudi Arabia to an unknown account in Singapore. Moussavi said this money belonged to Nawaz Sharif. He offered to trace those billion dollars so that they could be repatriated to Pakistan. In return, he would take a 20 per cent commission.

The tale continues: lawyers get involved, one UK barrister of Pakistani origin waltzes around in Islamabad and meets Prime Minister Imran Khan, Asad Umar and Barrister Shahzad Akbar among other people. He leads Moussavi to believe that the PTI government may be interested in taking up his offer. Then sometime in 2019, this UK lawyer fades into the tale's tapestry and a general appears on the scene. Laden with official documents, he...