ISLAMABAD: Details of President Asif Ali Zardari’s Swiss Bank account were given to the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday. The details were presented by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which, however, failed to furnish a record of cases pending against Zardari in Swiss courts.
Danishwar Malik, the NAB’s prosecutor general, told the 17-member Supreme Court bench that he left the record in London to subsequently transfer it to Pakistan in a diplomatic bag.
Abdul Baseer Qureshi, the NAB’s counsel, told the court that the NAB has applied at the Swiss Bank to transfer $60 million. The application was, however, later withdrawn.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to London, last week transferred a record of Zardari’s graft cases from Pakistan’s Diplomatic Mission in Geneva to London.
Justice Raja Fayyaz took exception to the development saying that the Swiss record was earlier safe but not anymore.
The Supreme Court is hearing three petitions against the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which provided indemnity to Zardari, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, Federal Ministers Rehman Malik, Ahmad Mukhtar, Nawab Yousaf Talpur, top bureaucrats like Secretary General of the Presidency Suleman Farooqi, and envoys Wajid Shamsul Hassan and Hussain Haqqani.
The petitioners in the case are Dr. Mubashir Hassan, Rodad Khan and Qazi Hussain Ahmad.
Meanwhile, Sindh Advocate General Yousaf Leghari presented a 180-page list of criminal cases abolished through the NRO in Sindh. At this, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry asked where the government orders are regarding the abolishment of these cases. Chaudhry also asked why the orders of the provincial government regarding the abolishment of the cases have not been included in the report.
He said if the provincial government did not abolish the cases, then all of the cases would be deemed pending.
Justice Javed Iqbal expressed dissatisfaction over the Sindh list and termed it “incomplete”. He also voiced displeasure that the list had not been given to all parties involved in the case.
Abdul Hafeez Pirzadah, the architect of Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution and a founder member of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party who is opposing the NRO, said Parliament spurned to turn the NRO into law and that this had never been achieved.
Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said in his remarks that several people have benefited from the NRO, but there is nobody at present to defend it.
The court adjourned on Wednesday with a dissatisfactory note that the NAB officials were not presenting original records and not giving proper answers to queries raised by members of the bench.
