Maryam Nawaz has said that Imran Khan mortgaged Pakistan to the IMF to take a loan from the international lender.

“When Imran Khan realised that his government will not survive any longer, he damaged Pakistan so much that it will take months to recover,” she said while talking to the media in Islamabad on Thursday outside the Islamabad High Court after appearing before it in the Avenfield apartment reference.

The previous government had ruined the economy and risked it to take loans from the Fund, she said.

She then read out a few lines from the contract signed by the previous government with the IMF in 2019 and said that it was written in the contract that subsidies on petroleum products would be abolished.

“Instead of increasing the prices of petroleum products he decreased them,” she said, adding that the former PM knew that the economy would not be able to bear the burden of the subsidies.

The incumbent government did not increase petroleum prices or tax a single penny on its own, she added.

According to the agreement the price of petrol should be Rs300 per litre.

“The incumbent government is bound by the contracts signed by Imran Khan,” she said, adding that the country could default if the government did not follow the contracts.

She said that Imran Khan said that metaphorical “land mines” had been laid for the incoming government.

Speaking about the PTI leader’s statement about the Pakistan Army not interfering in politics, she said that if the matter were political then why had they put the matter to the National Security Committee. “It is an issue of national security,” she added.

A day earlier PTI leader Asad Umar said at a press conference alongside Shireen Mazari that it would be better for the army and the country if the military’s spokesperson would not interpret political affairs again and again.

“Let political parties talk to each other about this,” the PTI leader added.

His statement had come in response to the military’s spokesperson interview in which he had clarified that the NSC meeting had found no evidence of a foreign conspiracy to oust the former premier.

Maryam said that the military spokesperson’s comments were based on facts, adding that Imran Khan was using security institutions for political gains.