ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Syed Shibli Faraz has said PPP and PML-N have been accepting donations from criminals and corrupt elements and are not submitting evidence regarding their foreign funding cases, pending in the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Talking to media in Islamabad today (Monday), along with Parliamentary Secretary Railways Farrukh Habib, he said there should be a difference between prohibited and foreign funding. He said PTI is not involved in any kind of accepting funding from prohibited entities like foreign governments or multi-national companies. He said PPP and PML-N have been using party funding for money laundering as well.

The Minister said PTI instead of accepting funds from mafias, had sought cooperation from its workers and sympathizers, who deposited small amounts ranging from ten to few hundred dollars. He said PTI has given complete detail of all its accounts to the ECP.

Farrukh Habib said ECP's scrutiny committee, auditing accounts of PML-N and the PPP, has issued three different orders urging them to submit detail of their accounts, but none of them is ready to comply with commission's directions.

Farrukh Habib said PML-N is registered as a private limited company in UK and the United States. He questioned as to how a political party can be registered as a private limited company in foreign countries. Similarly, he said, PPP's Principle Agent is Asif Ali Zardari in US, where he has been receiving funding from foreign companies. He said ECP is asking PPP to submit its foreign accounts' record, but to no avail. He said Nawaz Sharif first donated 100 million rupees to PML-N and, later on, got transferred 60 million rupees of them to his personal account. He said the PML-N is also not providing detail of its expenditure of 700 million rupees, which it spent on media campaigning.