Panamagate case hearing adjourned till Monday owing to judge's illness

Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh was rushed to a hospital following chest pain on Tuesday night

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday adjourned the Panamagate case hearing till Monday.

The hearing of a slew of petitions against the Sharif family for alleged corruption was adjourned as a member of a five-judge larger bench of the Supreme Court has been hospitalised. Late Tuesday night, Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh was rushed to the hospital.



According to sources, the judge was admitted to the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology following chest pain and may go undergo an angioplasty.

On January 4, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa who is heading the SC bench ruled the hearings of the Panamagate case will be conducted daily without any adjournment.

The Sharif family’s attorney faced another torrid session in the Supreme Court on Tuesday when the judges asked for documentary proof of the investments made by the ruling family in Qatar during the 1980s. The attorney was left nonplussed as he knew there were no satisfactory replies he could offer.

Salman Akram Raja, the counsel for the PM’s sons, quoted several judgments in his effort to convince the five-judge larger bench hearing the Panama Papers case to not pass any adverse verdict against his clients. He, however, struggled in removing ambiguities linked with the money trail through which the London flats were acquired in 2006.



The counsel was also unable to give a cogent reply to another key query: how the Sharif family could have made the investments after selling the Dubai Steel Mills during the 1980s when they had 15 million dirhams in pending dues.

He left another important link to the case unanswered, ie, the ‘originator’ of Nielsen and Nescoll — two offshore companies that owned the luxury properties in London.