Witness against Dar admits someone else prepared documents

ISLAMABAD: One of the prosecution witnesses against Senator Ishaq Dar, in assets beyond means reference, confessed before the accountability court on Monday that he had not properly read the documents presented in the court for which he had appeared as a witness and that “someone else” had prepared the documents against Ishaq Dar and not the witness himself. 

Not only this, the National Accountability Bureau’s witness Tariq Javaid, Senior Vice President of Al-Baraka Bank, was also caught off-guard by Khawaja Haris, lead counsel of Ishaq Dar, when the banker was told that according to the emails record which he has presented in the court, he had received an email from the Bank’s head office in Karachi at 12:45 pm on August 16, 2017 seeking record of accounts of Ishaq Dar and family whereas the attachment with the email, as presented by the witness, bore a fax number of NAB Lahore office with delivery time of 1:15 pm of the same day i.e. half an hour after the first email correspondence. The clock must have been running reverse at Al-Baraka Bank that day. 

This was not the first time that a NAB’s witness against Senator Ishaq Dar has told the accountability court that the material presented before the court was not prepared by him and he was appeared as mere witness. One Ishitiaq Ali, Manager Operations Al-Falah Bank where Dar had maintained a bank account till 2006 had appeared before the Accountability Court and during cross-questioning, he admitted that he did not prepare these documents, nor was he their author. He also could not produce any evidence to show whether he was the custodian of the warehouse where the bank kept such documentation. 

Whereas on Monday, Dar’s counsel while cross examining Tariq Javaid, made the witness confess that he had not prepared the documents for which he was appearing as a witness and that he had only given a cursory reading to the documents. 

When Khawaja Haris asked the witness that does he know how a mudarba company works, the reply was in negative. Haris said, “A person occupying the post of Senior Vice President of a bank does not know how a mudarba company functions. Then he explained that every mudarba company is operated by a management company and in the case of Ishaq Dar’s accounts, one was a mudarba company while the other was a management company.” 

Haris made the witness to divulge that all the documents presented in the court by him did not bore any name and designation of the person who certified them. There were mere stamps on the papers with signatures without any name or designation. 

On last hearing Haris had asked the witness to produce the record of email correspondence that led to compilation of bank record of Ishaq Dar and his family. On Monday, when the email correspondence was available in the court, Dar lawyer kept on asking the witness whether there was any attachment with the email or was there any mention of the NAB’s letter in the email correspondence, and the witness insisted that his bank started compiling the record after NAB’s letter was delivered to them on 16th August 2017. The documents read before the accountability court revealed that the bank started compiling the report even before NAB’s letter reached it but the witness kept on insisting that it only started after NAB’s letter was delivered to the bank. Haris technically belied the witness by telling him that NAB’s letter reached the bank via fax around 1:15 pm on August 16, 2017 while as per the statement of the witness and an email produced by him, he had received NAB’s letter via email attachment around 12:45 pm the same day. After being caught off-guard, the banker said that he could not comment but he received the NAB’s letter of collecting the accounts' details of Dar and family via email attachment. 

The corruption reference pertaining to Dar's owning assets disproportionate to his known sources of income was filed by the NAB in light of the Supreme Court's July 28 judgment in the Panama Papers case.