KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday granted seven-day protective bail to former finance minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Miftah Ismail, a day after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) scam.
Earlier in the day, Ismail submitted a bail application at the SHC seeking protective bail. The former minister maintained that the case was based in Islamabad and requested protective bail so that he could contact the relevant court.
While accepting his application for bail, the SHC also asked the PML-N stalwart to submit surety of Rs500,000.
Ismail was accompanied by the former managing director of Pakistan State Oil (PSO) Sheikh Imranul Haque who is accused of causing a loss of over Rs20 billion to the state-owned petroleum giant.
A day earlier, NAB Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal had signed Ismail’s arrest warrants under Section 18(e) and Section 24(a) of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999 and dispatched teams in Karachi and Islamabad to take the former finance minister into custody.
In an informal conversation with media after submitting the petition, Ismail said that “there was no need for NAB to conduct raids”, adding that he had received notices after 3pm on Thursday. Ismail further asserted that whenever the corruption watchdog had summoned him, he had “appeared before it”.
