CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

82 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
the Bhutto family for their wealth relied on Western property companies,
Western lawyers and a network of Western friends.” 65
Even the Swiss finally had had enough. Seventeen bank accounts linked
to Bhutto and Zardari were frozen. The two were charged with money laundering
in connection with bribes received from the inspection company
SGS and were convicted by a Swiss court in 2003, with fines and suspended
prison sentences. This was short-lived; the decision was overturned and referred
back to cantonal prosecutors upon appeal. Meanwhile, Zardari was in
prison in Pakistan from 1996 to 2004 on assorted charges.
Bhutto, with her father executed, two brothers assassinated, her mother
an amnesiac, her husband still troublesome, and she living in exile between
London and Dubai, portrays herself as the victim: “I never asked for power.
I think they [the Pakistani people] need me. I don’t think it’s addictive. You
want to run away from it, but it doesn’t let you go. ... I think the reason
this happens is that we want to give love and we receive love.” 66
Save your tears. In the global collection of displaced leaders, Benazir
Bhutto may be the least sympathetic character of all.
Nawaz Sharif. While Benazir Bhutto hated the generals for executing her
father, Nawaz Sharif early on figured out that they held the real power in
Pakistan. His father had established a foundry in 1939 and, together with
six brothers, had struggled for years only to see their business nationalized
by Ali Bhutto’s regime in 1972. This sealed decades of enmity between the
Bhuttos and the Sharifs. Following the military coup and General Zia’s assumption
of power, the business—Ittefaq—was returned to family hands in
1980. Nawaz Sharif became a director and cultivated relations with senior
military officers. This led to his appointment as finance minister of Punjab
and then election as chief minister of this most populous province in 1985.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, given Sharif’s political control of
Punjab and eventual prime ministership of the country, Ittefaq Industries
grew from its original single foundry into 30 businesses producing steel,
sugar, paper, and textiles, with combined revenues of $400 million, making
it one of the biggest private conglomerates in the nation. As in many other
countries, when you control the political realm, you can get anything you
want in the economic realm.
With Lahore, the capital of Punjab, serving as the seat of the family’s