In the treatise “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift” originally published as “Back sight Forethought” by Maj General Swinton, the author visualises the possible defence against imaginary enemy advances of an imaginary place called Duffer’s Drift and discovers a simple defence that actually works. The treatise has ever since 1907 been of biblical status in military defence strategy. The essential point in Swinton’s work is akin to Edgar Allen Poe’s in the “Purloined Letter”: what you may seek minutely may actually be written the largest.
The Prime Minister’s case in the Panama case has only one point in common with these world famous works vis. that in his team there are real duffers and that no one in his team saw the words written in the largest.
The Panama Papers never mentioned the name of Mian Nawaz Sharif and the only thing that the JIT has conclusively established is the absence of the Prime Minister’s name in any document whatsoever related to the now infamous Avenfield flats. The Prime Minister’s defence against the JIT Report was simply in owning the report to the extent of the Prime Minister’s person and praying expungement to his extent. The Prime Minister’s team failed and failed terribly to highlight this forceful fact writ large all over the JIT Report in favour of their client. Probably, dealing with the matter was left to a team B or to some non-legal individual (s).
The JIT like the two dissenting Judges has also conclusively established that his two sons were of tender age and not in a position to decide matters or make financial decisions when the acquisition process of the said properties began and there lies the defence of the sons.
Maryam Safdar a ‘head scarfed” lady, a dying tradition, was brought to cross-examination before six men and the final proof against her is “beneficial ownership” of Neilson and Nescol companies (in the Summary of Investigations) as per information from BVI. “Beneficial ownership” is not defined in any law in Pakistan and the generous inclusive definition of “beneficial ownership” as under the BVI laws does not establish a ‘cause of action’ against her under any law in Pakistan or does so only to the extent she does wrong under BVI laws by wearing head gear.
The crux of the matter for the father (MNS) and children is simple and simple enough. Late Mian Shareef as head of the family decided business matters and the rest simply knew the much he shared. He decided locally and overall and did not seek the father’s approval when deciding in respect of the grandchildren. If that is the case, as it is, even Mian Sharif and other family members have already undergone the possible sentences having faced incarceration in the 90s.
The Duffers in this case, whoever they were, chose not even to desire and have filed a detailed in seriatim (or parawise) rebuttal of the JIT Report and relied only on a forty or so paragraph “application” in C.M.A. 4978 of 2017 as the entire rebuttal, controvertion and defence of thousands of pages of a Report spreading over ten volumes. As such the “application” is in most general terms of an overview that is readily available in formatted templates in every legal chamber stating inter alia “bad in law”, “wrong assumption of judicial powers”, etc. For that the P.M. may well have engaged a junior from the ‘mufasil’.
No pains were taken to highlight these facts and none so for other blunders by the JIT in the financial flow-charts it has submitted to the August Court that accounts for an overall activity of $ 5million (JIT does not specify US $ or Canadian etc.) with just one link of $ 350,000 . Even Rahman Malik’s blatant admission that he had ‘no evidence except one or two papers’ (whence began the cases under Naseer Ullah Baber, Senior Advocate, International Court of Justice) has not been made the basis of rejecting the entire case against the first family. Probably, that required too much work.
However, there is little to worry as the final decision is open to a challenging review when hard work may get a chance to do some good.