Court adjourns hearing of petition seeking restoration of Faryal Talpur’s bank accounts

Accountability court seeks response from National Accountability Bureau

ISLAMABAD: An accountability court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing of a petition filed by senior PPP leader Faryal Talpur praying upon the court to unfreeze her personal bank accounts and those of her daughter.

Advocate Farooq H Naik, representing Talpur, presented relevant documents, including tax returns of her daughters during the hearing, presided over by Judge Mohammad Azam Khan.

Documents stating salary withdrawn from as a lawmaker of the Sindh Assembly and income from other businesses were also presented.



“The accountability court should order to unfreeze all three bank accounts since all relevant documents have been presented,” Talpur’s counsel implored.

Adjourning the hearing till March 10, the court sought response from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in light of submitted documents.

Fake accounts case history

Information regarding the fake accounts came to the fore when an intelligence agency picked up a prominent money changer in an unrelated case.

In December 2015, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) began a discreet investigation into certain bank accounts through which multi-billion rupee transactions have been made.

Investigators have so far identified 29 accounts which received payments, totalling at least Rs35 billion. The probe was initially shelved but resumed almost a year and a half later with FIA’s State Bank circle initiating a formal inquiry in January 2018.

By June, the FIA had several high-profile names on its list but was unable to make headway–for several reasons.



It was at his point that the Supreme Court intervened and then chief justice Mian Saqib Nisar took suo motu notice of the ‘slow progress’ in the money-laundering case. In July, Zardari’s close aides Hussain Lawai, Taha Raza and two others were arrested. Subsequently, the first case was registered in the mega-corruption scandal.

The then chief justice ordered the formation of a joint investigation team to quicken the pace of the investigation. The JIT identified 11,500 bank accounts and 924 account holders at the start of their investigation. After the JIT report, the names of 172 individuals were placed on the no-fly list by the interior ministry.