Zulfi Bukhari: Biography, Business, Role in Imran Khan’s Government and as the PTI’s Voice Abroad (2026)

Who is Zulfi Bukhari?

Here is the simplest description. Zulfi Bukhari is Imran Khan’s friend.

That is the source of everything else in his public life. He did not rise through a party’s ranks or win a seat. He was a wealthy young businessman in London who became close to a famous cricketer-turned-politician, helped fund and run his campaigns, and was brought into government when that politician became Prime Minister.

Since Imran Khan went to prison in 2023, the same friendship has given him a new role. From abroad, beyond the reach of Pakistani courts, he tells foreign journalists and politicians what the PTI wants them to hear.

Zulfi Bukhari has never asked a single voter for a vote. His influence rests on one relationship, and it has lasted through government, exile and his friend’s imprisonment.

Early life

He was born on 3 December 1980 in the United Kingdom and held British citizenship from birth.

His public biography gives this outline:

• He lived in Britain until he was about thirteen.
• His family then moved to Pakistan, and he went to school in Islamabad until he was eighteen.
• He returned to Britain for university and studied at Brunel University London.

The family in Attock

His family comes from Attock, the district where Punjab meets Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the Indus.

Politics was already in the house. His father, Wajid Hussain Bukhari, served as a minister during General Musharraf’s time. An uncle has been a PTI politician in Attock.

So although he grew up abroad, he was not a stranger to Pakistani politics.

The businessman

Before politics he built businesses in Britain. His public biography lists three.

He also has an interest in film. He was the executive producer of Cake (2018), a Pakistani family drama that was the country’s official entry for the foreign-language award at the Oscars that year.

Meeting Imran Khan

He became active in the PTI around 2011, the year the party took off.

Imran Khan had lived in Britain for much of his cricketing life and raised much of the money for his cancer hospital and his party from Pakistanis abroad. Young, successful British Pakistanis were a natural circle for him. Zulfi Bukhari became one of the closest.

In the 2018 election he ran Imran Khan’s own campaign in one of the Islamabad seats that the party leader contested.

The airport episode, June 2018

Weeks before that election, he was at the centre of a small scandal.

He was about to fly to Saudi Arabia with Imran Khan on a private pilgrimage when immigration officers stopped him. His name was on a travel control list because of an inquiry by the accountability bureau into offshore companies. After some hours and some telephone calls, the caretaker government gave him one-time permission to go.

Opponents said the party leader had used his influence. The party said the request had come from Zulfi Bukhari himself, through proper channels. A court later looked into how the permission had been given.

In government, 2018 to 2021

In September 2018 Imran Khan appointed him Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, with the status of a minister of state. He was later also made chairman of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation and of a national board for coordinating tourism.

What is a special assistant?

A special assistant is chosen by the Prime Minister alone. He needs no seat and no vote of approval. The post lets a Prime Minister bring in friends and experts from outside Parliament. Critics of every government say it also lets him hand power to people nobody elected.

Could a British citizen hold the post?

His appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court on exactly this ground: that a man with a foreign passport should not be running a Pakistani ministry.

The Constitution bars dual nationals from Parliament. But a special assistant is not a member of Parliament. The court dismissed the challenge, while noting that such appointments should be made with care.

Overseas Pakistanis

His main portfolio covered Pakistanis living abroad.

Those remittances are Pakistan’s single largest source of foreign currency, larger than the earnings of any export industry. A government that keeps overseas workers happy keeps the dollars coming.

During his time the government:

• signed agreements to send more workers to the Gulf, Japan and elsewhere;
• backed a new type of bank account that lets Pakistanis abroad invest at home online;
• pushed for overseas Pakistanis to be able to vote from abroad, a promise that was passed into law and later reversed by the next government.

Tourism

As head of the tourism corporation he was the face of a drive to bring foreign visitors to Pakistan’s mountains and heritage sites. The government eased visa rules and courted foreign travel writers. Arrivals rose until the pandemic stopped travel in 2020.

The controversies

His time in office was dogged by three rows.

Pilgrims and the pandemic, 2020

When Covid-19 reached Pakistan in early 2020, many of the first cases were among pilgrims returning from Iran through the border post at Taftan. An opposition leader accused him of using his influence to let pilgrims through without proper quarantine.

He denied it flatly, said he had no authority over the border and sent a legal notice for defamation.

The Rawalpindi Ring Road, 2021

In May 2021 an official inquiry reported that the route of a planned ring road around Rawalpindi had been changed in ways that would raise the value of land held by certain housing schemes. The report mentioned people said to be linked to him by family.

On 17 May 2021 he resigned. He said he was doing so on principle, so that the inquiry could proceed without any suggestion of pressure. He denied any part in the affair and said he had no dealings with the relative named.

His public biography says the investigators later found nothing against him. That should be confirmed from a news report before it is repeated.

The Al-Qadir Trust case

The most serious matter came after the government fell.

The Al-Qadir Trust was set up to build a university near Jhelum. Imran Khan and his wife were its trustees, and he was among the trustees at the start. The accountability bureau later alleged that land for the trust was a reward for a favour done to a property tycoon in a matter involving 190 million pounds returned to Pakistan from Britain.

He was named as a co-accused. Because he was abroad and did not appear, the court declared him a proclaimed offender. Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi were convicted in January 2025 and have appealed.

He denies wrongdoing and says the case is political. His part has not been tried, because he has not returned.

Giving up the British passport

On 3 September 2022 he renounced his British nationality.

The likely reason is the one already explained. A dual national cannot stand for Parliament. By giving up the foreign passport he removed that bar, should he ever wish to contest an election.

The voice abroad

After 9 May 2023 the PTI’s leaders inside Pakistan were jailed, silenced or driven from the party. Television channels stopped naming Imran Khan. The party needed people who could speak freely, and they had to be outside the country.

He became the most visible of them. His party title is adviser to the chairman on international media. In practice he:

• gives interviews to British and American broadcasters and news agencies;
• meets members of the British Parliament and the United States Congress;
• briefs human rights organisations on the cases against Imran Khan;
• runs the party’s messaging to the large PTI following among overseas Pakistanis.

The Pakistani government calls this lobbying against the country. The PTI calls it telling the truth about a political prisoner.

The PTI’s following abroad

To see why this role matters, consider who the party’s overseas supporters are.

Imran Khan was famous among Pakistanis abroad long before he was a force at home. He raised money from them for a cancer hospital in the 1990s and for his party afterwards. Many who had left Pakistan because they despaired of its politics saw in him someone like themselves: educated abroad, impatient with the old families.

That following is large, well off and organised. It holds rallies in London, Toronto and Houston. It writes to members of parliament and congress. And since 2023 it has done something the government finds harder to ignore: some of its members have urged fellow expatriates to send less money home in protest.

Whoever speaks to that audience speaks to a real political force, even though almost none of its members can vote in a Pakistani election.

What he said in August 2026

His most recent reported statement came in an interview with the Reuters news agency, published on 21 August 2026.

The background was a Supreme Court order that Imran Khan be moved from prison to a hospital in Islamabad for treatment. He described the order as a fresh source of hope.

He then said something that drew wide notice. If Imran Khan were released, he said, he would not seek a confrontation with the military and would do nothing that harmed the country. He spoke of setting personal pain aside for the national good.

Commentators read this as a marked softening of the party’s tone. They also asked whether Imran Khan himself shared the view, since the two men cannot speak freely. At the time of the report the transfer to hospital had not yet taken place.

The limits of politics from abroad

Speaking from London has clear advantages. Nobody can arrest him, and no regulator can take him off the air. But it has costs as well.

• Distance. He cannot meet Imran Khan. What he knows of the leader’s thinking comes at second hand, through lawyers and relatives.
• Suspicion. A spokesman who is safe abroad is easily painted as someone urging others to take risks he does not share.
• The foreign-hand charge. Every meeting with a foreign legislator lets the government say that the party is inviting outsiders to meddle in Pakistan’s affairs.

Parties in exile often discover that the longer they stay away, the less they understand the country they left. Whether that will be true of him depends on how long the present deadlock lasts.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters say he gave up a comfortable life in London to serve in a government for no salary, and that he has stayed loyal when loyalty stopped paying. They credit him with real work for overseas workers and for tourism. They believe the cases are a punishment for his closeness to Imran Khan.

Critics see a symbol of what was wrong with that government: an unelected friend of the leader, with a foreign passport, placed over a ministry. They point to the string of controversies. They note that he speaks boldly from the safety of London while others who stayed in Pakistan went to jail. And the government accuses him of damaging the country’s name abroad.

Each view has merit. He was never accountable to voters, and that is a fair objection. He has also been more constant than most of those who were.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Zulfi Bukhari at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows the weight of overseas Pakistanis. A community that sends home more than the country earns from any export wanted a voice in government, and for a time he was it.
• It shows the argument over unelected aides. Every Prime Minister brings in friends. Imran Khan’s choice of a dual national made the argument sharper.
• It shows how politics moves abroad when it is shut down at home. Much of the PTI’s campaign since 2023 has been fought in London and Washington.

For background, read our explainer on the vote of no confidence that ended the government he served in, and our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Zulfi Bukhari” — as last edited on 6 October 2026; parts of it read as promotional and were not relied on.
• The Express Tribune, “Imran Khan will not confront military if freed, Zulfi Bukhari says” — 21 August 2026.
• Minute Mirror, “Imran Khan would avoid military confrontation if freed, says Zulfi Bukhari” — August 2026.
• ARY News, “Zulfi not Imran Khan requested removal of his name from ECL, says Faisal Javed” — 2018.
• Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development
• State Bank of Pakistan, workers’ remittances data