The Golden Boys

PAKISTAN The Golden Boys

In the internal free-for-all that followed Pakistan's birth as a nation, Kassim and Abdullah Bhatti, sons of two fisherman brothers, built up a gold-smuggling empire so vast that prices on the Karachi bullion exchange fluctuated whenever the Bhattis brought in a shipment. Commanding a fleet of twelve ships that rendezvoused with contraband-carrying vessels in the Arabian Sea, and using new Chevrolets that easily outran customs officials' Jeeps on Pakistan's unpaved roads, the first cousins became rich men about town. Paunchy Kassim acquired a winning stable of 17 race horses and a taste for fading continental blondes. He also acquired friends in high places.

When the army took over power in Pakistan last October, one of its first acts was to arrest the Bhatti boys. In underwater caves near Karachi, navy frogmen found an incredible two tons of Bhatti gold. Abdullah, closemouthed on the stand but believed to be the brains of the operation, has already been sentenced to life imprisonment. Then Playboy Kassim went on trial--and talked.

Charging that many of the top officials of the old government encouraged his smuggling, Kassim told how once the late Governor General Ghulam Mohammed had ordered him to treat "as his own brothers" three Arabs whom he asked Kassim to assist in smuggling into Karachi two shipments of gold. Kassim also incriminated associates of former President Iskander Mirza and ex-Prime Ministers Noon and Suhrawardy, as well as 18 top Karachi police and customs officials. No matter which politicians were in power, he said, their henchmen demanded payoffs, and when he tried to quit the rackets they would not let him. "I did not give up smuggling," he pleaded, "because it was conducted at the point of a pistol--which continued to stay in my back even though the fingers holding the trigger changed." Outside court, the military regime of General Ayub Khan last week ordered a full police investigation of Kassim's charges.

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