Profile: Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari

Zardari is the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who was twice prime minister of Pakistan and was likely to be elected to the post a third time in 2007 when she was assassinated.

In August 2008, Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party named Zardari for president. The election was scheduled for Sept. 6. Zardari’s past, like Bhutto’s, is riddled with charges of corruption. He is known as “Mr. 10 Percent,” a reference to kickbacks believed to have enriched him and his late wife to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s never been convicted on any of the charges but served a total of 11 years in prison.

Zardari was born on July 21, 1956, the son of Pakistani politician Hakim Ali Zardari, a Sindhi tribal leader who opted for urban life and grew fantastically wealthy from it. Asif Ali Zardari had a privileged childhood, attending Saint Patrick's High School in Karachi, the same school that former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf—a Bhutto family rival—attended.

Zardari then attended the London School of Economics. Thanks to his father’s wealth, Zardari had a private disco in his own home and became known as a polo-playing playboy who called his ponies the Zardari Four. Zardari is a diabetic.

Zardari married Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 18, 1987. The marriage was arranged by the two families, with Bhutto’s mother picking out Zardari for her daughter. Bhutto and Zardari had met only five days before the wedding, though marriage negotiations took almost six months.

Had it not been for "the political ramifications of every step I take," Bhutto said at the time, "then perhaps this would not have been an arranged marriage, but, in the circumstances, it seemed the only course." Zardari kept to a few words: “I have no interest in politics,” an early but characteristic untruth. The couple had three children.

It wasn’t long before Zardari faced his first arrest—an attempted-murder and extortion charge in 1990 stemming from an alleged plot that April. Zadari and accomplice Ghulam Hussain Unar. Unar and Zardari allegedly strapped a remote-controlled bomb to the leg of Pakistani-born British businessman Murtaza Hussain Bukhari, who was discussing plans to build a hospital in Pakistan, and forced him to cash $800,000 in checks.

Zardari was imprisoned. He contested the charges, calling them politically motivated. Bhutto was prime minister at the time but was ousted in October 1990.

A special court acquitted Zardari of bank fraud and conspiracy to murder charges. He was released in February 1993. When Zardari’s wife became prime minister again months later, she named him finance minister—a post that did not exist. The couple built a $50 million “prime minister’s residence" on 110 acres on an Islamabad hilltop.

Zardari also acquired the 365-acre, $8 million Rockwood Estate in Surrey, England, and a $4 million estate in Palm Beach County, Florida. Cases of Zardari and Bhutto corruption piled up fast during her second tenure as prime minister.

Charges and allegations included:

• Zardari buying almost $1 million worth of jewelry through a Swiss bank account and an American Express card.
• Zardari taking kickbacks from a Dubai gold trader.
• French military contractor Dassault Aviation agreeing to pay Zardari $200 million in exchange for a $4 billion jet fighter deal with Pakistan. (The deal fell apart when Bhutto was booted out of government.)
• In 1996, Zardari was arrested again and charged with murdering his wife’s brother.

Zardari was imprisoned. Pakistan’s president dismissed Bhutto for corruption. Zardari was in prison until 2004.

The government claimed Bhutto and Zardari siphoned $1.5 billion in public money during Bhutto’s second term. None of the charges stuck, though Pakistan is still, according to The New Yorker's Steve Coll, looking into more than $54 million allegedly stashed in Swiss bank accounts by the Bhutto family. Investigators, Coll writes, are also "looking into companies involved in Iraq's oil-for-food program, under Saddam Hussein, from which Bhutto allegedly benefited."

Zardari won his release from prison after his wife’s Pakistan Peoples Party negotiated a deal with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Zardari moved to Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side, where he lived for three years.

Following his wife’s assassination, Zardari claimed her will named him as her successor to the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party. Zardari asked his son, Bilawal, to be the party chairman, though Zardari clearly intended to wield the power. On Aug. 22, the PPP nominated him for the Pakistani presidency vacated by Musharraf earlier that week. The election was set for Sept. 6.