Suisse Secrets: Who is Lt.General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan?

Former ISI chief General Akhtar Abdul Rehman and Lieutenant (retd) General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan have been named in a massive leak of secret banking data from a leading Swiss bank.

Dubbed the ‘Suisse secrets’, this massive trove was provided to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, by a whistle-blower and claims to have exposed the secret wealth of clients notorious for drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption.

Rehman was the father of Humayun Akhtar Khan and Haroon Akhtar Khan but Pakistanis know little about General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan.

According to the report, Zahild Ali Akbar reportedly oversaw development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

He was arrested in 2013 at the Bosnian border on an international arrest warrant in coordination with Interpol, in relation to charges of corruption in his home country for holding assets of unknown origin in 77 different bank accounts.

Khan, now 89-year-old, retired in 1992 from public service as the head of both the Pakistan Cricket Board and the state-owned utility Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA), positions he had held since 1987.

Lt. General Zahid Ali Akbar, who was appointed Pakistan Cricket Board president by Nawaz Sharif, is the cousin of former Pakistani batsman Javed Burki and Imran Khan. He is also the father-in-law of Humayun Akhtar Khan.