ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has totally discredited the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) by rejecting the NAB’s appeal for reopening the Hudaibya Papers Mills case.
The JIT in its final report made tall claims that it has brought on record substantial additional evidence, which substantiate and corroborate the FIA and NAB investigations and also establishes the linkages between the two investigations. It also recommended that all the three cases are fit to be reopened for investigation and trial on the basis of new additional evidence procured and brought on record by the JIT.
However, contrary to the claims of JIT, NAB failed to provide those substantial additional evidence and establish the money trail to prove the alleged money laundering before the apex court.
Now when the apex court has rejected the NAB’s plea of reopening the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case, the question is whether the JIT really did any investigation into Hudaibiya Paper Mills case. If any serious investigation was done, why NAB failed to present the substantial additional evidence before the court or, there were no fresh evidence and the JIT merely presented the old facts of the case. Apparently, the SC judgment of December 15 which rejected the NAB’s plea indicates that there was no fresh evidence as claimed by the JIT.
The JIT in its finding had claimed that in the light of the above findings, it can safely conclude that since the inception in 1991 and culminating in 1998, various fictitious and fraudulent foreign currency accounts were opened and loans were obtained/secured with deposits therein used for the benefits of business concerns namely the Hudaibiya Engineering, Chaudhry Sugar, Hamza Board Mills owned by the respondents and close members of their family. Finally, the unwinding of intricate loan structure set up by Respondent No 10 was completed in 1998 whereby the entire remaining proceeds amounting to Rs712 million approximately ended up in the two companies namely Hudaibiya Papers Mills (Rs642 million) and Hudaibiya Engineering (Rs70 million) as advance against share subscription.
“Since 1998 both the companies have not issued shares against the advance. According to the returns including the audited financial statements submitted by these companies with the SECP, there is no claim made whatsoever by any person against the companies demanding issuance of share certificates against the advance or return thereof. This indicates that person on record of the company i.e. Saddiqa Syed Mahfoodh Hussain Khadem and members of the Qazi family transferring such huge funds in the accounts of the company (as advance against share subscription) were not actual depositors of the funds. The actual persons making these deposits apparently, intended to hide their true identities. It is evident that the real beneficiaries of these funds were the equity holders in the HPML. It may further be noted that the nexus between the Respondent 1 (Nawaz Sharif), 6 (Maryam Nawaz Sharif) and 7 (Hussain Nawaz) is established by the fact that they are cited as accused while Respondent No 10 (Ishaq Dar) is cited as an approver in the NAB final reference No 5 of 2000," says the report.
On the basis of its findings, the JIT, in its final report, recommended that it had been brought on record substantial additional evidence which substantiated and corroborated the FIA and NAB investigations and also established the linkages between the two investigations. It also recommended that all the three cases are fit to be reopened for investigation and trial on the basis of new additional evidence procured and brought on record by the JIT. In view of the foregoing, the honorable bench may pass appropriate orders including filing of reference against the accused already identified in the reference, if deemed fit.
The JIT also recommended that in the light of additional evidence collected by the JIT in the Hudaibiya Papers Mills reference, some other names including Saeed Ahmed and Javed Kayani should also be included among the accused of this case.
It is pertinent to mention here that, in Sept 2011, NAB had filed an application in the court to seek the revival of the two references. In Oct 2011, a Rawalpindi division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) restrained the accountability court from proceedings in the matter after Mr Sharif and members of his family challenged the revival of the references and requested the court to quash the cases. The two-member bench reserved the judgment on the petition on Dec 3, 2012. Because of differences in opinions of the two judges, the matter was forwarded to a referee judge of LHC who on March 11, 2014 quashed the reference against the Sharif family on the grounds that if a re-investigation was allowed against the Sharif family, it would provide an opportunity to investigators to pad up the lacunas.