SC to hear NAB’s reopening plea from Monday

Anti-corruption watchdog is appealing an LHC judgment barring it from investigating the case

ISLAMABAD: The top court has set Monday for the next hearing into the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) appeal against a Lahore High Court order to quash an investigation into the Rs1.2 billion Hudabiya Paper Mills scam against the Sharif family.

The three-judge bench is headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and also comprises Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel.

The Sharif family legal team is not happy that the appeal has been fixed before a bench led by Justice Khosa because he, in his April 20 judgment, has already expressed his opinion on the same issue.

Independent experts, however, said that it is at the judge’s discretion whether or not to sit on the bench in such a case.

Justice Khosa’s 192-page note had directed the NAB to proceed against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in connection with Hudabiya Paper Mills reference case wherein he was not an accused person when the said reference was quashed by LHC, which also barred reinvestigation and set aside Dar’s confessional statement.

Justice Khosa observed that there was an apparent flaw in the judgment as the reference to the LHC judge was on whether or not an observation could be made not regarding the reinvestigation, and not as to whether reinvestigation could be carried out.

He also said that the NAB did not challenge the LHC verdict before the SC, and incidentally, Nawaz Sharif was prime minister at the time.

The judge also said that the reference was quashed by then LHC because in the investigation, the Sharifs had not been associated and Dar’s confessional statement had been made before a magistrate and not before the trial court.

“I may observe that the soundness of both the said reasons prevailing with the high court for quashing the relevant reference was quite suspect,” Justice Khosa wrote in his judgment.

However, he refrained from passing directions to NAB to file a fresh case. “Issuance of such a direction can have the effect of compromising the impartiality of the appellant court and clouding its neutrality. Thus I have restrained myself from issuing the direction prayed for,” says the order.

Almost 17 years ago, NAB had claimed that Sharif and his family received over Rs1 billion ‘through illegal and fraudulent means’ and that they were liable to be tried under anti-corruption laws.

In 2014, the LHC quashed the Hudabiya Paper Mills reference against the Sharifs. NAB did not challenge the order in the SC.

According to NAB documents – a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune – Premier Sharif, his daughter Maryam, father Mian Muhammad Sharif, brothers Shehbaz Sharif and Abbas Sharif, Abbas’s wife Sabiha, Nawaz’s son Hussain, and Shahbaz’s son Hamza, had been accused of receiving ‘ill-gotten money’ in the case.

“All the accused persons colluded to commit acts of corruption and corrupt practices as defined under Section 9 and Section 10 of the NAB Ordinance,” former NAB chairman Lt Gen (retd) Khalid Maqbool had told an accountability court.

It is interesting to note that NAB had filed two references in the Hudabiya case.

NAB to file appeal in Hudabiya case today

Incumbent Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was nominated as an accused in the initial reference, but NAB’s final reference excluded him after he recorded a confession.

There was an unexplained investment of Rs642.743m appearing in the mill’s books as share deposit money. “This belonged to the directors, shareholders, and beneficial owners of the company, which they had fraudulently amassed under the garb of foreign equity investment,” said the final reference.

It said that in 1999, the company settled a loan with London-based Al-Towfeek Company for investment funds by making a payment of $8.7 million. The source of this payment also appeared to be questionable.

“It appears from the evidence that in order to launder and conceal their ill-gotten wealth, both Sharif brothers opened fictitious foreign currency accounts in the names of various individuals with the active connivance of some of their close associates and employees.

After the passage of three years, NAB filed an appeal against LHC order in September 2017.

In its appeal, NAB says the referee judge was not competent to set aside the findings of the high court in which NAB had been allowed to re-initiate investigations against Sharif family members.

It said when the joint investigating team (JIT) formed to probe corruption allegations against the Sharif family in the Panama Papers case had collected further incriminating evidence relating to the mill scam, "NAB cannot be debarred from proceeding further with the investigation."