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Friday March 29, 2024

NAB’s new references are old wine in a new bottle

By Tariq Butt
February 19, 2018

ISLAMABAD: The supplementary references filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and others contain not a single fresh piece of evidence or a new small paper of proof received from foreign countries or generated from Pakistan, and the total reliance continues to be on the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) findings.

The JIT report was rubbished when a three-member bench of the Supreme Court had trashed a NAB appeal, seeking reinvestigation in the Hudaibya Paper Mills case.

It is evident from the references that the NAB has got nothing from foreign jurisdictions where the Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) requests were sent several months ago, starting from last year when the JIT proceedings were in progress.

After that, the NAB investigators have spent a lot of public money on a number of foreign visits on a fishing expedition to get something credible from abroad but to no avail.

This view is substantiated from the wordings of the references: The final responses of MLA requests, which have already been forwarded to foreign jurisdictions, are still awaited. In this regard, material correspondences have been made with concerned foreign jurisdictions. The same will be placed before the accountability court in accordance with law, if received.

There are also many obvious telling, noteworthy points in the supplementary references, which expose the fact that the NAB doesn’t have anything in its possession in support of its serious accusations against the Sharif family.

One, even when the NAB is too aggressive against this set of accused persons, it has not made any allegation of abuse of authority or corruption against Nawaz Sharif.

Two, there is no evidence that the deposed prime minister is the owner of any offshore company or London apartments. Three, there is no proof that Hussain and Hassan were owners of the flats in the nineties.

Four, no document has been presented by the NAB to establish that Nawaz Sharif is a beneficial owner of offshore company or British properties. Five, no link has been established between the ex-premier and ownership of the apartments. Six, there is no evidence of money laundering done in the nineties to prove that such funds were used to buy the flats.

In a famous judgment handed in 2011, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa had held that the NAB had to prove a nexus of abuse of authority and corruption with the assets which are otherwise established to be beyond known sources of income of the accused.

The supplementary references repeated the same allegations, which were written in the JIT report, against Nawaz Sharif, Hussain and Hassan in generalised terms without presenting any specific proof in support of its charges.

For example, they said that the ex-premier’s sons in connivance with one another assisted, abetted and aided (words used in the NAB law) their father in accumulating and managing the assets.

The only new “material evidence”, if it can be so called, the NAB’s claim to have “collected and seized comprises “certified banking record regarding remittances from Hill Metal Establishment (HME) to different persons as well as record regarding the address to nation” of Nawaz Sharif, his speech on the floor of the National Assembly, and interview of Hussain which were aired through electronic media.

Again, this is not something “new” because all this stuff figured in the JIT findings in which efforts were made to create an impression of massive corruption without backing it up with irrefutable evidence.

On the basis of this collected evidence through investigation conducted so far, the NAB claimed, it is established that Nawaz Sharif acquired, owned/possessed, the assets along with crime proceeds in millions of rupees with the active connivance of his dependents/benamidars, Hussain and Hassan.

The former prime minister and his sons have been named in all three interim and supplementary references while Maryam and Captain (R) Muhammad Safdar have only been nominated in the London apartments’ case.

In January, the NAB had filed a supplementary reference against the Sharif family in the flats case, stating that criminal role of some key accused in the case was being investigated and it would file a second supplementary reference as and when required.

In the apartments’ reference, the former prime minister was one of the accused persons along with other members of his family.

In the supplementary reference, the NAB declared him the prime accused as it alleged that he could not reasonably account for and did not commensurate with his sources of income.

In the supplementary references, the focus is on getting Nawaz Sharif come what may although his name appears nowhere as the owner of any offshore company or the London properties or a beneficial owner.

The six-month deadline given to the accountability court by the Supreme Court in its July 28 judgment, which disqualified Nawaz Sharif, to decide the four references including the one against former finance minister Ishaq Dar expires next month. The proceedings are at an advance stage, and the NAB claims that they are about to conclude. But the corruption buster is still at the same old place from where it started – placing its total reliance on the JIT report without producing any fresh evidence.

It is widely before that accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir will deliver his verdict(s) before March 12 when he retires, after having two tenures of his present position.