NAB indecisive over filing references against Sharifs

ISLAMABAD: In a rare move, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has decided to seek guidance from the monitoring Supreme Court judge, Justice Ijazul Ahsan, on filing references in the accountability courts against deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the members of his family and others, being the first-ever process in the history of the anti-graft agency.Never in the past had the Bureau been ordered to file references on the basis of an investigation done by any other forum.

The sources told The News that NAB’s prosecution wing was of the view that the whole JIT report should be adopted as references because the order of the court was specific in this regard but the investigation wing of the Bureau opined that a further probe was needed to file a solid reference against the Sharifs and that by-passing NAB’s investigation wing to file references against the Sharifs might result in weak cases, which could become difficult for the prosecution to defend.

As this debate continues in NAB, it has been decided to consult Justice Ijazul Ahsan, who has been nominated by the Chief Justice of Pakistan to monitor the filing of references against the Sharif family as a consequence of the Panama Papers judgment. NAB is likely to seek time from Justice Ijazul Ahsan in the coming week, to get clarity on the issue, a senior officer of NAB said.

It is the first case of its kind where the NAB has been ordered by the Supreme Court to file references on the basis of the JIT report with a specific time period of six weeks.

As a standard procedure, NAB normally confirms a complaint and then converts it into an inquiry, which matures into an investigation and even after the investigation, prosecution wing’s vetting is necessary for filing a reference. In any case, only the NAB chairman or his authorised officer can file a reference.

In the past too, NAB was provided with the JIT reports but the Bureau took its time to file references in order to defend its case in the courts. The JIT reports in Bank of Punjab scam and housing societies scam were further probed by NAB to recover billions from the looters. The sources in the NAB said that even former CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered the Bureau to file references in 12 cases of Rental Power Projects immediately but NAB took its time and after getting satisfied, filed the references and a few references on Rental Power Plants are as recent as 2016, three years after the retirement of CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The Supreme Court in its July 28 judgment, besides disqualifying Nawaz Sharif, ordered NAB that it shall ‘within six weeks from the date of this judgment prepare and file before the Accountability Court, Rawalpindi/Islamabad, the following references, on the basis of the material collected and referred to by the JIT in its report and such other material as may be available with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and NAB having any nexus with the assets or which may subsequently become available including material that may come before it pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance requests sent by the JIT to different jurisdictions.’

The court further ordered that NAB might file supplementary reference(s) if and when any other asset, which is not prima facie reasonably accounted for, is discovered. The Accountability Court has been ordered to decide the references within a period of six months from the date of filing.

It is worth mentioning here that NAB on Monday last decided to file four corruption references against the Sharif family, Senator Ishaq Dar and others in the light of the Panama Papers case judgment. The NAB has also constituted a five-member investigation team headed by Additional Director M Rizwan, and four deputy directors, including Mehboob Alam, Muhammad Zubair, Aamir Marth and Aasma Chaudhry.