LAHORE: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar got a major relief as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has written to different banks and departments to unfreeze his accounts amounting to over Rs500 million and detach his properties in Lahore and Islamabad in the light of court orders.

Mr Dar is among several other politicians of the ruling coalition at the Centre who got relief under the amended NAB laws. The PML-N leader is said to be very excited to have his old house in Lahore back which he claimed to have gifted to his wife in the late 1980s.

Mr Dar’s five-kanal Gulberg residence hit the headlines in 2019 following the revelation that he got an amenity plot altered to build a road leading to his residence.

However, after the Supreme Court took notice of the matter, the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) restored the public park. The apex court had also directed the LDA to recover restoration cost from Ishaq Dar.

“Besides the Gulberg house, the departments concerned have been directed by NAB to detach three plots in Al Falah Housing Society, Lahore; six acres of land in Islam­abad; a two-kanal plot in Parliamentarians Encla­­ve, Islamabad; a plot in the Senate Cooperative Hou­­sing Society, Islamabad; a plot measuring two kanals and another of nine marlas in Islamabad; and six vehicles,” an official told Dawn.

The departments had in 2019 attached these properties at the request of NAB following the court orders.

Mr Dar was declared an absconder by the Supreme Court in 2017 when he failed to appear before it as he was in London. He was facing an income-beyond-means and money laundering reference filed by NAB.

His arrest warrants were suspended by an accountability court in September this year, paving the way for his return from London where he spent nearly five years in self-exile.

Published in Dawn, December 8th, 2022