JIT allegations: No impediments to probe, insists Dar

Says the probe team’s application to SC has made the matter suspicious

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has assured the National Assembly that the government is not creating impediments for the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the offshore assets of the Sharif family.

Dar on Wednesday said that the JIT claims that some government departments and institutions were creating hurdles to the probe and that its members had received life threats were made “out of some frustration to make the matter suspicious”.

“I refute all such claims [of the JIT]. I never asked any of the two departments [the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, and the Federal Board of Revenue] to create obstacles, tamper documents, or to not produce any of the documents asked by the JIT,” Dar told the lower house.

“I do not know out of what frustration the JIT filed that application in the Supreme Court… but one thing is for sure that that matter is going to become further suspicious,” he added.

Earlier, both Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi expressed their reservations over the severe allegations leveled by the JIT against state departments.



During the last sitting of the NA budget session – which concluded on Wednesday – the annoyance of ruling party MPs with the PTI was clearly evident from their conduct.

As soon as Qureshi started speaking over the matter, the ruling party MPs started heckling and booing. Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali took personal shots at the PTI leader, calling him ‘fake peer’ throughout his speech.

Several other government MPs followed suit and started chanting pro-Nawaz and anti-Imran slogans. In the face of continuing sloganeering, Qureshi cut his speech short and the NA Speaker had to call for order in the house.

Dar, while responding to criticism, said ‘truckloads of papers’ had been sent to the JIT by the SECP and the FBR on the team’s request. He said he never stopped anyone from producing any document to the probe team.

The minister said the government respected the ongoing process of investigations but doubts and suspicions on the process were also part of the record. He said the prime minister had already directed PML-N activists to not gather outside the Federal Judicial Academy the day he would appear before the JIT to record his statement.

Earlier, Khursheed Shah said his party considered JIT a part of the Supreme Court. He said if powerful and influential people tried to conceal the evidence and forge and tamper documents, as claimed by the JIT, then the state would lose its authority and right to implement the law on the poor too, and such a situation would give rise to anarchy.

 



The entire opposition at first protested before the speaker’s dais and then walked out in protest against the prime minister’s failure to appear in the lower house to brief MPs about the ongoing Gulf diplomatic crisis and Pakistan’s role in it. The opposition did not return until the speaker announced that the budget session had been prorogued.

“We are unable to comprehend what fears are hindering the premier from coming to the NA to inform us about the Saudi-Qatar row and what role Pakistan has been playing,” Khursheed said before leading the walkout. He criticised the incumbent regime for its ‘failure’ on the diplomatic front ‘due to a vague foreign policy’.

Dar, in his concluding speech, mentioned before the house some 124 supplementary demands for grants relating to FY 2016-17 and 59 excess demands for grants and appropriations relating to FY 1998-99 and FY 2003-04, which had been approved by the house minus the opposition.