Al-Azizia reference: Nawaz declines to present evidence in his defence

ISLAMABAD: The Accountability Court-II Thursday sought final arguments from respondents in Al-Azizia corruption reference, as former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif completed recording his statement under the Criminal Procedure Code.

Accountability Court-II Judge Arshad Malik heard the Al-Azizia reference filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against the former premier. Recording his statement with the Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik, Nawaz declined to present evidence in his favour and said the NAB couldn’t prove its accusations against him.

“I’m not going to present my defense in the reference. This case was filed against me on the basis of allegations leveled by my political opponents and a one-sided report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT),” Nawaz told the judge.

He said whenever a politician was booked under typical charges of “amassing assets beyond means”, it basically meant the accusers had no proof of their baseless accusations. He said the Supreme Court was not fully satisfied with the JIT report in which they showed me as owner of Al-Azizia Steel Mill and Hill Metal Establishment that’s why the top court sent the matter to the trial court.

Judge Malik asked Nawaz why the case was filed and why the witnesses had recorded statements against him. Responding, Nawaz said, “This case was run on the basis of assumptions. It was started on allegations of money laundering, tax theft and corruption and after strict accountability it was turned into a case of owing assets beyond known sources of income.”

He said there was not a single proof of wrongdoing presented during the course of this never-ending investigation and its most substantial proof was the statement of Wajid Zia and his investigation officer.

“They have admitted under oath before this honorable court that there is no proof of all the accusations leveled against me,” he said. Addressing the judge, Nawaz said rigorous efforts were made to link and implicate him in matters having nothing to do with him.

Nawaz said his father established the industry in 1937 but he had no link with the business for 40 years. Nawaz said his sons were financially independent managing their business in compliance with the laws of the country they resided in; therefore, it just made no sense to tie their financial dealings with him.

Nawaz said he felt proud and content that despite dragging every member of his family from his ancestors right down to his grandchildren, not even a penny of corruption, misappropriation or kickbacks had been found by the rigorous investigators.

“This is mainly because all this fiasco was run on speculations and anything run on baseless speculations cannot last. A case that started from alleging corruption worth billions, mass money laundering and tax-evasion eventually landed on the same clichéd tag of “assets beyond means”.

Nawaz said during the accountability process he had sacrificed politically, socially and domestically to prove his innocence before the law because his conscience and his political career spanning four decades was clean.

The former prime minister mentioned that he had suffered an irreparable damage, both politically and in his private life during the case, but he did not back down because he had faith in Allah Almighty and expectation of justice from the court.

Nawaz said he was son of the soil and always considered people’s trust as honor and challenge at the same time. The former PM said his government brought peace from the strife-marred Balochistan to the law and order disaster of body bags and shutdowns in Karachi, restored a sense of wellbeing among Pakistanis, pulled the country out of power outages and bloodshed, held crucial censuses; gave massive resources to boost key sectors of the republic vis-à-vis agriculture, education and healthcare, uprooted terrorism from the country, reincarnated foreign relations of Pakistan, brought massive investments into Pakistan with the CPEC leading with over 50 billion dollars, stood strong by the people of Kashmir, advocated their right to self-determination and the tyrannical occupation of India aggressively at all regional and international platforms. All these are glaring evidences of the fact that the PML-N left a substantially better Pakistan for its people at the end of 2018, he added.

“As far as this case is concerned, the honorable judge and the entire world is aware of what had been going on in the name of accountability for the past two and a half years. There is no precedent of such accountability in the entire history of the country,” he added.