Controversial Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz on Saturday accused the Pakistan government of trying to prevent him from testifying in Islamabad next week and alleged that Interior Minister Rehman Malik has launched a smear campaign against him.
Ijaz threatened to make public what he claimed was evidence of Malik's involvement in alleged ‘corrupt practices’.
He accused the Pakistan's Interior Minister of indulging in ‘character assassination’.
Ijaz, the central character in the memogate scandal the has sparked a political crisis in Pakistan, claimed in a statement that Malik and the government of President Asif Ali Zardari were behind a ‘massive cover-up’ to prevent him from testifying next week before a Supreme Court-appointed judicial commission investigation the memo scandal.
He contended that Malik had asked Pakistan's Parliamentary Committee on National Security to ‘rubber-stamp his demand’ for putting him on the Exit Control List. Ijaz further accused Malik of playing ‘devious and underhanded tricks’ to prevent his appearance before the commission.
"This development comes just as I am finalising my travel arrangements to come to Pakistan," Ijaz said in a press statement.
Ijaz failed to make a scheduled appearance before the commission on Monday. The panel then summoned him to appear before it on January 24. Ijaz, who was issued a visa by the Pakistani mission in London on Thursday, declined to say when he would travel to Islamabad to testify before the panel.
Ijaz claimed he possessed ‘sufficient evidence’ of Malik's ‘direct involvement in matters that would be of material and direct investigative consequence to Interpol, the Supreme Court of Pakistan and other investigative and judicial authorities around the world’.