ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday will commence hearing of the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) appeal to reopen the controversial Rs1.2 billion Hudaibya corruption reference, said to be the Sharif family’s Achilles heel.
Justice Mushir Alam will head the three-judge special Supreme Court bench, comprising Justice Qazi Faez Isa and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel. Justice Alam has been appointed in place of Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who had recused himself from the bench assigned to hear the case.
At the previous hearing on Nov 21, Justice Khosa had expressed bewilderment over the court office’s reasoning behind its decision to fix the case before him. He wondered whether the office had even read the Supreme Court’s April 20 verdict in the Panama Papers case, in which Justice Khosa had authored 14 paragraphs on the Hudaibya Paper Mills reference. His minority opinion had included orders to NAB, requesting them to proceed against former finance minister Ishaq Dar, who had first appeared as a prosecution witness in the case.
.The Sharifs are accused of setting up the mills to launder money under the cover of Economic Reform Act 1992
NAB had appealed against the Lahore High Court’s decision in 2014 to quash the Hudaibya Paper Mills reference. The matter was referred to Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar who ordered reconstitution of the bench.
In his judgement, Justice Khosa had highlighted that Mr Dar had not been arrayed as an accused person in the final Reference 5 of 2,000 (Hudaibya reference) filed by NAB, and was shown to be a prosecution witness when the reference was quashed and reinvestigation barred. He noted that the LHC’s decision to quash the reference did not entail Mr Dar’s acquittal nor did it end the possibility of a trial at a subsequent stage.
If NAB succeeds in convincing the Supreme Court to accept its appeal, Reference 5 of 2000 would be reopened and filed before the relevant accountability court for a final decision. Deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, their mother Shamim Akhtar, the late Abbas Sharif, Maryam Safdar, Hussain Nawaz, Hamza Shahbaz, Messers Hudaibya Paper Mills Ltd, the federal government, and the judge of the Rawalpindi accountability court IV have been named the respondents in the NAB appeal to reopen the case.
They have been accused of setting up Hudaibya Paper Mills Ltd to launder money under the cover of the Economic Reform Act 1992. NAB has alleged that they had laundered money by converting it into Foreign Exchange Bearer Certificates (FEBC) to be deposited into foreign currency accounts opened in the name of “benamidars” and friends, by allegedly forging the signatures of some ostensible account holders.
These foreign currency accounts, the reference explained, were then allegedly used by the Sharifs as collateral to obtain credit lines in Pakistani rupees for Hudaibya Paper Mills. The reference stated that Mr Dar had helped the Sharif family open a number of fictitious bank accounts, and was involved in several other illegal activities with the end of achieving certain objectives to their own benefit.
The reference alleged that the laundered money, shown to be the share deposit equity of Hudaibya Paper Mills Ltd, was used to pay the mill’s liabilities as well as those of other allied companies owned by the group — a sum amounting to Rs642.7m. Another Rs600m was then transferred from abroad for the final settlement of borrowings from Al-Taufeeq Bank, which was owned by the Sharif family. Thus, the family managed to acquire approximately Rs1.2bn, and the wealth constituted the unexplained income which was disproportionate to their known sources of earnings.
On Dec 3, 2012, the high court had quashed the reference but the judges had disagreed with each other over the possibility of reopening the case by NAB. This necessitated referring the case to a referee judge who held on March 11, 2014 that reinvestigation of the case was not permissible because it would mean providing NAB another opportunity ostensibly to fill up their lacunas and equip them with better tools for combat or to victimise the Sharifs.
In its appeal, NAB argued that the high court’s verdict had not been passed in consonance with the dictums laid down by the apex court, besides the referee judge was not competent to set aside the findings of a high court judge in the matter of re-investigation, as was done in this case.
The investigation into the corruption allegation was an ongoing process and there could not be an embargo on fresh investigations especially when new material has emerged, the appeal argued.
NAB cannot be debarred or restrained from proceeding further when the JIT had collected incriminating material in Hudaibya case, the appeal said, adding that it would be appropriate to set aside the high court judgement to the extent of re-investigation in order to fortify and corroborate the material collected by the JIT.
Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2017