Nawaz Sharif’s principal secretary Fawad Hassan gets bail after 19 months

LAH ORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to former principal secretary to ex-premier Nawaz Sharif, Fawad Hassan Fawad, in a reference of accumulating assets beyond means, filed by the National Accountability Bureau.

A two-judge bench had on Feb 14, 2019 granted bail to Fawad and PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif in Ashiana-i-Iqbal housing scam. However, Fawad was denied bail in the assets case.

NAB had arrested him on July 5, 2018 initially in the housing scam and he remained behind the bars for almost 19 months. As the hearing commenced on Tuesday, Fawad’s counsel, Azam Nazir Tarar, argued before the bench that the prosecution had been unable to prove its allegations before the trial court. Moreover, the trial had been delayed unnecessarily. Legally,the trial commences after indictment of an accused, but the same had not been done in the case, the counsel contended.

The counsel informed the court that the trial court was dysfunctional as it was without a presiding officer since Sept 2019. In his arguments, a NAB prosecutor said the prosecution had no role in the provision of a presiding judge. However, he replied in negative when the bench asked him whether NAB wrote a letter to the law ministry or the chief justice of the high court for appointment of a presiding judge.

Advocate Tarar argued that the prosecution backtracked from its earlier stance regarding the worth of the assets owned by the petitioner. He said NAB initially claimed that a plaza in Rawalpindi was allegedly owned by the petitioner and it had a worth of Rs5 billion. But now it claimed in the reference that the value of whole assets of the petitioner’s family was Rs1.8 billion.

He argued that the petitioner owned not a single property and the Bureau termed the properties of his wife and brother “benamidars” (ostensible owner). He said there were visible flaws in the investigation.

To a court’s query, the counsel said NAB never arrested other family members of the petitioner nominated as suspects in the reference.

The prosecutor said the SC had not directed the petitioner to approach the high court for bail on fresh grounds. The counsel, however, said the apex court had refused to entertain fresh evidence relating to bank accounts and asked the petitioner to approach the LHC instead.

He also stated that the petitioner reached superannuation last week and he was supposed to vacate possession of official residence along with his family.

After hearing the arguments, the bench comprising Justice Tariq Abbasi and Justice Chaudhry Mushtaq Ahmad allowed the bail petition subject to two surety bonds of Rs10 million.

NAB sources said the decision would be challenged before the Supreme Court. They said the bureau’s chairman had already directed a team in that regard.