Court accepts accused’s plea bargain

Orders IO to provide Dr Asim’s counsel complete copies of Rs17b corruption reference

An accountability court accepted on Saturday the plea bargain application filed on behalf of Kamran Iftikhar Lari, who is accused in a reference pertaining to the corruption of over Rs23 billion in the Pakistan StateOil.

The application was filed by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officials, who said Lari was willing to repay Rs1.29 billion of the embezzled funds in three installments.

They told the court that the NAB chairperson had signed the plea agreement.

At this, the court accepted the plea bargain.

Separately, the court directed the investigation officer to provide a complete copies of the corruption reference filed Dr Asim Hussain and others over accusations of embezzling Sui Southern Gas Company funds to defence lawyers.

Dr Asim and others, including Iqbal Z Ahmed, Shoaib Mirza, Shoaib Warsi, Zohair Siddiqui, Ahmed Jamil Ansari, are accused of embezzling Rs17 billion of the company's funds.

The IO told the court that reference copies had been provided to defence lawyers, but the latter claimed that some of the pages were missing in the copies given to them.

The NAB prosecutor responded that defence lawyers were given complete copies but some of the pages were not in the right order.

Stating that the dispute needed to be settled on the day through mutual consultation so that witnesses' statements could be recorded at the next hearing, the court directed the IO to provide the counsels for the accused complete copies of the reference.

It adjourned the hearing till November 14.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2020.