LAHORE, March 4: The NAB informed an accountability court on Tuesday that three more illegal properties of former MNA Akhtar Vario had been unearthed.

Mr Vario, also a former chairman of the Sialkot Zila Council, had been arrested on charges of amassing wealth through illegal means.

The NAB alleged that Akhtar Vario, in abuse of his position as an MNA, acquired a 20 kanal plot in a housing society of Lahore’s canal bank, eight kanal plot in Lahore and 400 acre agriculture land in Sambrial.

The bureau sought further extension in the custody of Mr Vario, pleading that the documents of the properties acquired by the accused through illegal means were yet to be recovered.

Allowing the plea, the court extended Mr Vario’s physical remand till March 18.

Mr Vario opposed the application for extension in his physical custody alleging that the three properties had been wrongly attributed to him by the prosecution to show a fake progress in the investigations.

He alleged that the investigating officer had never approached him with regard to the allegations and he had not been given a chance to prove his innocence.

The court observed that the NAB had the legal right for a 90-day physical custody of an accused arrested on corruption charges. It further observed that the accused would be given full chance to prove his innocence during the trial.

Akhtar Vario had been sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment in absentia by an accountability court under Section 31-A of the NAB Ordinance on June 13, 2002, for absconding the proceedings of a corruption reference filed against him.

Mr Vario was arrested last month and initially remanded into NAB custody for two weeks.

As alleged by the NAB, Mr Vario misused his authority as a former MNA and a former chairman of the Sialkot Zila Council (1979 to 1987) to acquire assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

He allegedly acquired 1,167 kanals in Sialkot and Gujrat district; a bungalow worth Rs50 million constructed over 12 kanals at Mahmood Ghaznavi Road, Sialkot Cantt; shares in Grace Hotel, Lahore; Rs1 million worth shares in a shop located in Sialkot’s Ghalla Mandi; a vehicle worth Rs0.779 million, and a house in Atta Turk Block of Garden Town, Lahore, over a piece of land measuring one kanal.

He allegedly built a farmhouse in Kala Harawan village out of the funds earmarked for the construction of a community centre.

Mr Vario was accused of causing a loss of over Rs1 million to the national exchequer through the grant of an illegal rebate on export tax.

Allegedly, he never filed any income tax and wealth tax return prior to 1994-95 and wrongly declared his assets in the annual returns filed later.