Accountability court adjourns graft hearing against Dar until Oct 18

ISLAMABAD: The accountability court on Monday adjourned the hearing of corruption reference filed against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar until October 18. As the hearing resumed at noon,  Dar’s lawyer Khawaja Harris was only able to complete Tariq Javed’s cross-examination.  The hearing had earlier in the morning gone into recess after the bench was informed about Dar’s counsel’s unavailability.

During Monday’s hearing, Javed submitted details of e-mails exchanged between the bank and National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which he was asked to present by the court in the hearing last week.

NAB’s fourth witness – Habib Bank Islamabad Manager Masood Ghani – was unable to record statement on Monday owing to lack of time.

Earlier on Monday morning, Dar made his way to the court amid strict security. There is a heavy deployment of police and Frontier Constabulary personnel ensuring security around the judicial complex.

As the hearing went underway,  Dar’s associate counsel Hussain Mufti informed the court that Dar’s lawyer would be available at noon for the hearing. The judge, therefore, adjourned the hearing until noon on Monday.

Moreover, junior lawyer Kauseen Faisal Mufti’s pleaded before the bench to allow an exemption to Dar from future hearings.Mufti, in his client’s petition, stated that Dar wished to be exempted from court hearings in order to be able to focus on his engagement and duties as finance minister.

Subsequently, the bench turned down the exemption plea.

Harris, however, refiled the appeal for the finance minister’s exemption from the proceedings.

This was Dar’s fifth appearance before the accountability court in the corruption reference that was filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the light of the Supreme Court’s verdict on July 28 in the Panama Papers case.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) during an eight-hour long trial on October 12 hearing had presented two witnesses – Shahid Aziz of the National Investment Trust and Tariq Javed of the Al-Baraka Bank – before the Accountability Court to record their statements during hearing against Federal Minister for Finance Senator Ishaq Dar in the corruption reference.

The NAB in an earlier hearing had submitted a list of 28 witnesses with the court.

During the hearing, prosecution witness Shahid Aziz informed the court that Senator Dar had invested Rs120 million as a finance minister in 2015, but he withdrew this money from the trust after the Panama Papers case was initiated in January 2017.

Javed submitted the details of Senator Dar’s five accounts – belonging to his two companies and spouse: details of the bank accounts of Dar’s wife and the companies Hajveri Modarba and Hajveri Holdings.

Javed told the court that Senator Dar had opened an account in the bank’s Lahore branch in 1991, and added that Tabassum Ishaq Dar was also an account holder in the bank and owns a company – HDS Securities Private Limited.

Dar’s counsel Khawaja Muhammad Haris while cross-examining the witnesses had argued about the legitimacy of the submitted documents.He had said that the electronic statement cannot be taken as primary evidence and asked the court to add his objection in the record.

The accountability court had indicted Dar last month in a corruption reference pertaining to ownership of assets beyond known sources of income.