ISLAMABAD: Star prosecution witness Wajid Zia, who headed the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in the Panama Papers case, completed his testimony on Monday as did the lead defence counsel his cross-examination in 11 consecutive proceedings.

By concluding Mr Zia’s testimony, the accountability court has come closer to winding up the prosecution evidence in the Flagship Investment reference. The court has already closed evidence in the Al-Azizia reference and in the next stage former prime minister Nawaz Sharif will record his statement under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code after which the prosecution as well as the defence counsel will start final arguments.

The court will commence recording of the statement of the last prosecution witness, the investigation officer in the Flagship Investment reference, on Tuesday.

The statement of the last prosecution witness to be recorded today

The defence counsel and the prosecutors are hopeful that the proceedings in both Al-Azizia and Flagship Investment references would be completed within the Nov 17 deadline set by the Supreme Court.

During Monday’s proceedings, lead defence counsel Khawaja Haris put several questions to Mr Zia about the competency and affiliation of other five members of the JIT.

Mr Zia admitted that it was in his “knowledge that Mr Bilal Rasool, executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, was the real maternal nephew of Mian Mohammad Azhar, former governor of Punjab”.

He, however, could not “recall that…wife of Bilal Rasool was a nominee of PML-Q for the special seat reserved for women for the provincial elections held in 2013 or that later she was an ardent supporter of the PTI”.

Regarding the State Bank of Pakistan’s representative Amir Aziz, the star witness testified before the court that Mr Aziz was working on deputation with the National Institute of Banking and Finance when he was nominated as a JIT member.

Mr Zia conceded that “it had come into my notice during investigation that Mr Amir Aziz was inducted into NAB on deputation as a banking specialist during the Musharraf regime and he was part of the investigation team which, inter alia, investigated the Hudaibya Paper Mills (HPM) case”.

The witness then acknowledged that the HPM reference was filed in 2000, but was subsequently quashed by the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court upheld the LHC decision.

Regarding NAB director general Irfan Mangi, the prosecution witness said that “at the time of his nomination as a member of JIT, there was an inquiry pending against him [Mangi] regarding his appointment/induction in NAB”.

When the defence counsel asked about the status of a nominee from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since, according to the counsel, he was not a regular employee of the spy agency, Mr Zia said: “It had not come to my notice that at the time of nomination as member of JIT, retired Brigadier Mohammad Noman Saeed was not a regular employee of ISI, rather he was an ex-employee who was re-employed as a source employee of the ISI. I am not familiar with the working of ISI, therefore cannot explain what a source employee is.”

The star witness said that “the fifth member of the JIT Brig Kamran Khurshid belonged to Military Intelligence”.

Responding to a question about payment of Rs110 million to NAB by Mr Sharif, he said that this fact also came into the notice of the JIT during the course of investigation that Mr Sharif had paid this amount to NAB “pursuant to his conviction by the Anti-Terrorism Court, Karachi, on April 6, 2000, and by Accountability Court of Attock on July 22, 2000”.

These courts had convicted Mr Sharif following the cases instituted against him by the Musharraf regime.

Mr Zia admitted that “it had come to the notice of JIT that as per the judgement it was held that NAB had no jurisdiction to receive any money on behalf of accused Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif pursuant to the aforesaid convictions”.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2018