Avenfield corruption reference: London flats made part of court record

ISLAMABAD: The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) head, Wajid Zia, resumed recording his statement with the Accountability Court on Friday and shared more documents with the judge in the Avenfield Apartment’s corruption reference.

Wajid produced the original letter of Sheikh Hammad Bin Jasim Khalifa Al-Thani that was submitted to the Supreme Court during the Panama case hearing. Surprisingly, it was quite different from the letter of Al-Thani that Zia had submitted to the court on March 15.

Legal counsel for Nawaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz and Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar, Khawaja Haris Ahmed and Amjad Pervez advocates raised objections to the fresh letter saying it was not admissible being not part of the record. Sustaining the objection, Judge Muhammad Bashir directed Zia that if he wanted to submit a letter as new evidence, he should file an application and then the court would decide whether or not it was admissible.

Wajid Zia and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecution then took the letter back. Wajid Zia submitted many documents to the court. The defence counsel raised objections, saying many documents were either photocopies or either photocopies or photocopies of photocopies.

Wajid Zia also showed an agreement between Al-Taufiq Company and Hudaibya Paper Mills and land registry of London Flats and Nescol Company. The defense counsel raised objections over the land registry but the court allowed it to become part of judicial record.

The defense counsel also raised objections over some documents stating that they had also been produced in the Supreme Court by some other parties. They said Wajid could only refer to documents authored or collected by him.

The defense also disputed the relevance of some documents. Some documents had discrepancies like missing pages, missing stamps, noting and signatures. NAB prosecutor Afzal Qureshi insisted that the contents were the same. The court however said that photocopied documents should be exactly the same. The judge again told Wajid Zia to arrange his documents properly. The proceedings were adjourned to March 20.