Key witness in fake accounts case against Zardari dies

Masood had worked as chief financial officer for Omni Group

RAWALPINDI/ISLAMABAD:

A key witness of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) – Aslam Masood — in the fake bank accounts case against former president Asif Zardari died of cardiac arrest in Rawalpindi on Monday.

Masood had been imprisoned in the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi.

 According to the jail authorities, he was suffering from diabetes and kidney disease and had been on dialysis at a government hospital for the last six months.

Masood, who had worked as chief financial officer for the Omni Group had turned approver against Zardari and the Omni Group itself in the multi-billion-rupee money laundering case.

He was a witness in the reference and had been nominated accused in two cases.

He was arrested through Interpol when he was boarding a flight to Jeddah from London in October 2018 and was subsequently extradited to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia in February 2019.

The jail authorities noted that Masood had died of cardiac arrest and that his body would be handed over to his family after the completion of all legal formalities.

They further said that as Masood was imprisoned in the Adiala Jail, his postmortem would be done for which a letter had been written to Rawalpindi district and sessions judge for the nomination of the magistrate.

The National Accountability Authority (NAB) claimed that he had died of Covid-19.