ISLAMABAD: Sheikh Rashid Ahmed — who was also one of the petitioners in the Panama Papers case that led to the ouster of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif — asked the Supreme Court on Monday to initiate contempt proceedings against the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for reneging on its commitment to reopen the Hudabiya Paper Mills reference.

The politician from Rawalpindi personally came to the apex court to file the contempt of court petition under Article 204 of the Constitution, which argued that the omission, failure and lapse by NAB amounted to a breach of the undertaking it gave to the Supreme Court.

In the interests of justice, the implementation bench has been asked to issue directives for NAB, its chairman and prosecutor general to fulfil the voluntary undertaking given on behalf of NAB against the 2014 judgement of the Lahore High Court quashing the Hudabiya Paper Mills case.

On July 21, NAB Additional Prosecutor General Akbar Tarar told the three-judge implementation bench in the Panama Papers case that since the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) had collected fresh evidence relating to the allegations, NAB was considering filing an appeal against the high court’s decision of quashing the reference.

Sheikh Rashid wants action against accountability watchdog for reneging on commitment to SC

The reference was originally made against ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on charges of money laundering.

On Dec 3, 2012, the Lahore High Court had quashed the reference, but the judges disagreed with each other over the permissibility of a reinvestigation. The matter was then referred to a referee judge, who had on March 11, 2014 held that a reinvestigation into the case could not be allowed.

But contrary to its stance before the court, NAB later decided not to file an appeal in the Supreme Court.

This prompted Sheikh Rashid to file the contempt petition in which he also cited the July 28 judgement in the Panama Papers case, where Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan had observed that the court would see when NAB filed the appeal. Mr Rashid recalled that he had issued a reminder to NAB Chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, but had not received a reply to date.

This was in keeping with NAB’s apathetic conduct and attitude, the petition maintained, alleging that the chairman, prosecutor general and other NAB officials had colluded under the influence of the accused, Nawaz Sharif, to obfuscate the matter.

‘‘This is part of a concerted conspiracy to frustrate the implementation of the final judgement in the Panama Papers case,’’ the petition argued.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2017