Justice Khosa recuses himself from Hudaibiya case

ISLAMABAD: Justice Asif Saeed Khosa on Monday recused himself from the three-member bench formed to hear Hudaibiya Paper Mills reference against the Sharif Family.

When the hearing began, Justice Khosa observed that the case was wrongly put up by the Registrar Office before me. In Panama Papers case, I had ordered to re-open the Hudaibiya case and directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to proceed further in the light of April 20 verdict, he remarked.

The hearing was then adjourned for an indefinite period however, the NAB prosecutor pleaded to fix a date within a week.

A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and comprising Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan, was constituted last week to hear the appeal, filed by NAB, seeking re-investigation of the Rs1.2 billion Hudaibiya Mills case.

According to the Hudaibiya reference, the Sharif family had set up the mill to launder money. A joint investigation team, set up to investigate the Sharif family’s offshore properties, had recommended in its report that the Hudaibiya Paper Mills should be investigated afresh.

Subsequently, a Supreme Court bench hearing the Panama Papers case, had asked the bureau to reopen the case. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who is a close aide and relative of the Sharifs, had given a confessional statement before a magistrate alleging that Sharif brothers used Hudaibiya Paper Mills as cover for money laundering during the late 1990s. Dar later retracted his statement and claimed that the statement was gleaned under duress.