Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday approached the Supreme Court (SC) against a banking court verdict ordering transfer of fake bank accounts and money laundering case from Karachi to an accountability court in Islamabad.
On July 6 last year, the FIA had lodged the fake accounts case in a banking court in Karachi which was heard there for approximately eight months. Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur had taken protective bails in the case. On a request by the National Accountability Court (NAB), on March 15, 2019, the banking court ordered that the case be transferred to Islamabad where it is being heard by accountability court judge Arshad Malik.
Zardari has filed an appeal in the apex court through his lawyer which questions the March 15 order of the banking court. The appeal states that the former president is being subjected to political victimisation as fake and fabricated cases have been instituted against him. Making NAB chairman and the banking court respondents, the appellant contended that he has not been nominated in an interim charge-sheet of the case, and demanded that the apex court set aside the banking court’s ruling. Last month, the Sindh High Court (SHC) had dismissed a set of petitions filed by Zardari and others against the transfer of the case to Islamabad, ruling that the order of the banking court was in accordance with the Supreme Court’s judgement.
“After examining the judgement of Honourable Supreme Court, we do not see any ambiguity in the said judgment which would lead us to conclude that the transfer of the case pending before the special court (arising out of FIR No. 04/2018) was excluded from the ambit of the judgment when it was ordered that a reference by the NAB be filed before the accountability court, Islamabad,” the SHC had observed.
Meanwhile, the PPP leadership has decided to appear before NAB on Wednesday (today). Former president Zardari and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto will appear before the NAB investigation team in Rawalpindi.
The decision was taken during a consultation meeting of senior PPP leaders held at Zardari House on Tuesday.
The meeting was attended by former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Faryal Talpur, Nayyer Bukhari, Naveed Qamar, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, Latif Khosa, Hamayun Khan, Murtaza Wahab, Qayyum Soomro, Chaudhry Manzoor, Farhatullah Babar and others.
