The executive board meeting of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Tuesday gave approval for filing of the first reference pertaining to the fake bank accounts and mega money laundering case.
NAB Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal chaired the executive board meeting which granted approval for the filing of six corruption references, including one pertaining to the fake bank account case.
SHC rejects appeals against transfer of fake accounts case
A notification issued after the meeting stated, “Approval was granted for the filing of a reference against Khawaja Abdul Ghani Majeed, chief executive officer Omni Group of companies, and others. The suspects are accused of fake bank accounts and illegally regularising seven acres of official land. The suspects caused a Rs 1.422 billion loss to the national exchequer.”
Separately, the Sindh High Court on Tuesday dismissed all applications seeking the reversal of a banking court’s orders to move the fake accounts case investigation from Karachi to Rawalpindi.
During the hearing, the defence submitted their reply to NAB’s reply submitted in the last hearing of the case.
Soon after that, the defending lawyer, Farooq H Naek, gave his concluding arguments and reiterated all the points he had made during previous hearings of the case.
“The Supreme Court had only given orders for further investigation in the case,” Naek insisted, arguing there was no reason to shift the case too.
To this, the court asked that if the orders had not directly been given by the Supreme Court, did the NAB chairman not have the power to request a case to be moved from one court to the other.
However, the defending lawyer insisted that a NAB court does not have the power to hear the case.
The lawyer for Hussain Lawai and Taha Raza, Shoukat Hayat, in his concluding arguments said that “this was the first case in history to have been shifted from one province to another”.
“A trial court does not hold the power to transfer a case from one province to another,” he said, adding that the NAB chairman also does not hold this right.
The lawyer for Anwar Majeed and Abdul Ghani Majeed, Barrister Jamshed Malik, said that had the Supreme Court given clear orders for the case’s transfer, the NAB chairman would not have had to write to the court requesting it.
“The investigation officer in the case would simply have come in and said that the top court has ordered for the case to be transferred,” he added.
“The banking court overstepped its powers when it transferred the case,” Malik insisted.
However, the court rejected all appeals, thereby green-lighting the transfer of the case from Karachi to Rawalpindi’s accountability court.
