IHC registrar tells Faryal to file plea again

Raises objection over ambiguity in documents submitted with petition for unfreezing accounts

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court registrar on Thursday turned down PPP leader Faryal Talpur’s petition against the freezing of her bank accounts over ambiguity in the documents she had submitted and told her to file it again.

The registrar said the plea would be accepted once the objection it had raised was removed.

On April 23, Talpur, former president Asif Ali Zardari’s sister, moved the IHC for unfreezing of her bank accounts to meet her personal and domestic expenses.

In the petition, she requested the court to suspend the decision of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on July 25, 2019, and the March 31 ruling of an accountability court.

She requested the IHC to quash the decision of the accountability court and order unfreezing her bank accounts.

Earlier, an accountability court had rejected a petition of Talpur seeking to unfreeze her personal bank account, but restored two accounts of her daughters.

Accountability Court-II Judge Azam Khan had issued the order on Talpur’s petition challenging the freezing of her account in connection with the fake bank accounts case.

NAB had written a letter to the State Bank after her name surfaced in the fake accounts case.

The SBP had directed scheduled banks to freeze her accounts. Subsequently, three accounts — one in her name and two in the name of her daughters — were frozen.

According to the prosecution, the banks were asked to freeze Talpur’s accounts in the fake bank accounts case involving alleged money laundering of billions of rupees through 29 accounts.

The Federal Investigation Agency had named former president Asif Ali Zardari, Ms Talpur, Omni Group chairman Anwar Majeed, his sons and over 10 others as suspects in an interim challan filed in a banking court in August 2018.

The case was transferred to Islamabad for trial after a Karachi banking court accepted NAB’s transfer plea filed after the Supreme Court had referred a joint investigation team’s report on the fake accounts case to the bureau with a directive to investigate the matter and file references.