NRO case: Zardari files review petition in SC

ISLAMABAD: The former President, Asif Ali Zardari, on Tuesday filed a review petition against the Supreme Court verdict summoning details of his 10-year record of the assets and foreign and local bank accounts owned by him.

The former president filed a review petition in the apex court under Article 188 of the Constitution read with Order XXVI, Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1980, for review of order of the apex court of August 29, 2018, in a petition regarding the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). On August 29, a three-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar while hearing the case related to the NRO had expressed dissatisfaction over the affidavits submitted by Asif Zardiari and former military ruler Pervez Musharraf regarding their assets and directed them to submit within three weeks a 10-year record of the assets and the foreign and local bank accounts owned by them.

One Feroz Shah Gilani had filed a petition in the apex court, praying to order recovery of ‘huge amounts of public money’ misappropriated and wasted through unlawful means ‘already on record in different judgments of the Supreme Court and high court. The petitioner had contended that Musharraf subverted the Constitution by declaring emergency followed by the promulgation of the NRO, through which criminal and corruption cases against politicians, including Zardari, were arbitrarily withdrawn. In pursuance of the court’s earlier order, former Asif Zardari had submitted an affidavit before the court wherein he contended that he neither owned any moveable or immoveable property nor has any bank account outside Pakistan.

On Tuesday, Zardari filed a review petition against the apex court’s order of August 29. Filing the review petition, his lawyer Farooq H Naek contended that his client was already acquitted from the cases in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and there are no documents related to their assets.

The counsel submitted that under the law, asset details of a person cannot be summoned and it is a violation of the basic rights, adding that to date no corruption cases has been proved against the former president.

The former president questioned as to whether the impugned order runs contrary to the established jurisprudence of Pakistan as there does not exist any provision in the law of Pakistan which requires a person to disclose all his assets and business activities that he may have conducted over the past decade.

He further questioned as to whether the said order fails to take into account the practical difficulties that would occur in attempting to gather the information required to be furnish in the affidavit sought under the said order?