ISLAMABAD: An accountability court here on Monday indicted former president Asif Ali Zardari and others in Park Lane and Thatta water supply scheme references.

The accused persons, however, pleaded not guilty.

Both the references are offshoots of the fake bank accounts case. Mr Zardari has so far been indicted in four references related to the fake accounts case. He was earlier indicted in Tosha­khana and mega money laundering references.

After the accused denied the charges read out against them, accountability court judge Mohammad Azam Khan summoned evidence from the prosecutor of the National Accoun­tability Bureau (NAB).

The court issued notices to prosecution witnesses Nabeel Zahoor, Ahsan Aslam and Abdul Kabir for Oct 20 in the Park Lane case and Imran Mehmood, Ali Raza and Tariq Munir for Oct 21 in the Thatta water supply reference.

The court indicted Mr Zardari and 18 others in the Park Lane reference and 15 accused in the Thatta water supply case, including the former president.

The prosecution alleged that Mr Zardari had influenced the relevant authorities during his tenure as president to get loans released to his front companies, including Park Lane.

The former president allegedly got a loan of Rs1.5 billion released to his front company Parthenon Private Limited with ill intention and the money was later transferred for his personal use through fake bank accounts.

NAB accused the former president of causing a loss of Rs3.77bn to the national exchequer through these fake bank account transactions. The anti-graft watchdog alleged that the accused created benami properties through Park Lane using Parthenon Private Limited as the front company.

Initially, a loan of Rs1.5bn was allegedly taken that gradually increased to Rs4bn. The former executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and two former presidents of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) are listed as witnesses against Mr Zardari in this reference.

According to Farooq H. Naek, the lead counsel for Mr Zardari, the former president was a director of Park Lane, but quit the company in 2008 before assuming the office of president of Pakistan. He said the board of directors of the company accepted the resignation of Mr Zardari, but it could not communicate the matter to the SECP in time.

Mr Naek said NAB had overlooked financial laws while filing the reference against his client. He said the NBP credit committee had approved the loan for Parthenon Private Limited, but NAB did not implicate even a single official of the bank in the reference, adding that those who might be an accused in the case had been listed as prosecution witnesses.

The water supply reference pertains to alleged illegal award of a contract by the special initiative department for water supply scheme, Thatta, to private contractor Harish & Co.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2020