Zardari exonerated for ‘want of evidence’

ISLAMABAD: An accountability court on Tuesday exonerated former president and PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari in the famous SGS and Cotecna corruption references for want of incriminating evidence.
The judge said the prosecution had failed to provide solid evidence and that the documentation presented in the court was incomplete and in the form of photocopies rather than the original documents.
Filed in 1998, these references remained pending due to the photocopy record, as the original document was not produced before the court by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
It was on September 9, 2015 when former Deputy Chairman NAB Hassan Wasim Afzal told the court that he himself had brought the original record of two references from Switzerland and submitted it to the then Ehtesab bench in Lahore comprising Justice Ehsanul Haq Chaudhry and Justice Raja Muhammad Khursheed.
After the court proceedings, Wasim Afzal had told the media that there was a document that was a signed agreement between Asif Ali Zardari and his agent.
NAB prosecutor Ch Riaz told The News that when he asked Hassan Wasim Afzal what record he had procured and in what specific corruption reference, Afzal could not reply and failed to point out the particulars of the record he was talking about.
He further said if the original record was missing, the responsibility lay with the LHC Ehtesab bench.
The record from the Ehtesab bench was shifted to the accountability court in Attock and later it was shifted to the Rawalpindi accountability court and onward to the Islamabad accountability court.
Ch Riaz said the accountability court registrar wrote to the registrar LHC for the retrieval of original record but remained unsuccessful.
The NAB law officers even tried to look for the original record from the Supreme Court but they could not find it.
Announcing the judgment that it had reserved on November 11, the court acquitted Zardari in the two corruption references, accepting his applications filed under Article 265-K.
Previously, it was on December 22, 2014 when the accountability court dismissed Zardari’s application under Section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) for acquittal in the two references.
The same court accepted Zardari’s application on December 12, 2014 under Article 265-K in two corruption references namely Ursus tractors and import of gold ARY and later the NAB filed appeals with the Islamabad High Court against the acquittal of Zardari.
Those appeals are still pending. On May 28, 2014 the AC Islamabad also acquitted Zardari in the Polo Ground corruption reference.
Now the only corruption reference pending against Zardari is “illegal assets corruption reference” pending with the Rawalpindi accountability court.