According to investigation reports available with Pakistani
authorities, Benazir, a student at Harvard and Oxford for six years
in the 1970s, has been a vocal critic of avaricious politicians.
In a Harvard commencement speech in 1989, she said that such people
had looted developing countries and left them without the means to
tackle their social problems. Since she was ousted as prime
minister during her second term, on Nov. 5, 1996, on charges that
included gross corruption, she has been the leader of Pakistans
main opposition group, the Pakistan Peoples Party
The Bhuttos are among a few hundred so-called feudal families,
mostly large landowners, that have dominated politics and business
in Pakistan since its creation in 1947
They maintained an imperial lifestyle in the new prime ministers
residence in Islamabad, a $50 million mansion set on 110 acres on
an Islamabad hilltop. Among the transactions Zardari exploited,
according to these officials: defense contracts; power plant
projects; the privatization of state-owned industries; the awarding
of broadcast licenses; the granting of an export monopoly for the
countrys huge rice harvest; the purchase of planes for Pakistan
International Airlines; the assignment of textile export quotas;
the granting of oil and gas permits; authorizations to build sugar
mills, and the sale of government lands. Benazir Bhutto and Zardari
took pains to avoid creating a documentary record of their role in
hundreds of deals. The couple adopted a system under which they
assigned favors by writing orders on yellow Post-It notes and
attaching them to official files. After the deals were completed,
the notes were removed, destroying all trace of involvement.
