ISLAMABAD: The National Accoun­t­ability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday filed an application seeking expeditious disposal of appeals filed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz and her husband retired Captain Mohammad Safdar against their conviction in Avenfield Apartment reference.

On July 6, 2018, accountability Judge Mohammad Bashir had convicted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Ms Nawaz and Capt Safdar and sentenced Mr Sharif to 10 years in prison for owning assets beyond known sources of income, also imposing a fine of £8 million on him.

The judge sentenced Ms Nawaz to seven years in prison, along with a fine of £2m, and Capt Safdar to one-year imprisonment.

However, the convictions were challenged in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that subsequently suspended the sentences.

NAB has now submitted an application to the IHC, requesting the court to fix the appeals, saying that under the National Accountability Ordinance the cases should be disposed of expeditiously.

The Supreme Court ordered recently that the number of accountability courts be enhanced and also issued specific directives for early adjudication of the matters, the NAB application said.

Interestingly, NAB is not pursuing a similar case involving former president and co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party Asif Ali Zardari for the same reasons, even though NAB’s appeals have been pending with the IHC since 2014.

Judge Bashir had acquitted Mr Zardari in five corruption references. These were the ARY Gold, SGS, Cotecna, polo ground and Ursus Tractor corruption references.

In December of 2014, Mr Zardari had been acquitted in the ARY Gold and Ursus Tractor corruption references.

The ARY reference was about alleged grant of licences to ARY Traders for the import of gold and silver. The tractor reference pertained to alleged misappropriation in the purchase of 5,900 Russian and Polish tractors.

The SGS and Cotecna references were related to the award of pre-shipment contracts with the allegations that Mr Zardari and his spouse had received six per cent of the total amount involved as kickback.

The polo ground corruption reference was about the construction of a multi-million-rupee polo ground on the premises of Prime Minister House.

The IHC took up Sharif family’s appeals in September last year. However, the court declared Mr Sharif a proclaimed offender, but did not fix the appeals for further hearing.

The appeals alleged that Judge Bashir had passed the Avenfield Apartment verdict on the basis of presumptions and assumptions, and without fulfilling the “requirements of justice”.

They argued that until the IHC adjudicates on the appeals filed against the accountability court’s judgement, the convicts should be released on bail.

They claimed that the chart of Sharif family’s assets and liabilities as their “known sources of income”, which was produced in the accountability court, was not submitted by the head of the joint investigation team in Panama Papers case, who was NAB’s star witness, and did not bear the signatures of any officials either.

The appeals also referred to the use of Calibri font in a trust deed, saying that forensic expert Robert Radley had admitted that the font had been in existence at the time the deed was prepared.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2021