Graft cases: NAB court reserves judgment in five references against Zardari

The references were filed 17 years ago during Nawaz Sharif’s second term as PM.

ISLAMABAD:

An accountability court on Tuesday reserved its judgment on the acquittal plea of former president and co-chairperson of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari, regarding five corruption references.

The bench reserved its judgment after Zardari’s counsel, Farooq H Naek, concluded his argument. The court will announce its decision on May 28. The former president is facing five references filed by NAB 17 years ago, including the Ursus tractors deal, the ARY case, the polo ground case, and the Cotecna and SGS cases. In October 2013, the same bench had reopened graft cases against the former president after his presidential immunity expired.

In his concluding arguments on Tuesday, Naek maintained that the cases were pending against his clients for 17 years and not a single witness testified against Zardari. The counsel claimed that the record submitted by the prosecution were not genuine, as they were photocopies and have no legal significance.

Naek, argued that the references were filed against Zardari under the Ehtasab Act promulgated in the previous Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) regime, under which maximum punishment, even in offences of serious nature, was not more than seven years. He informed the court that his client had remained in prison for over eight years without any valid reason.

He informed the court that the co-accused in all the corruption references has already been acquitted and the prosecution had failed to establish their connection with the crime.

Polo ground 

The reference is related to the illegal construction of the polo ground and other ancillary works at the Prime Minister House when Benazir Bhutto was the PM.  In this case, the court had acquitted Saeed Mehdi, while the case against Shafi Sehwani, a former Capital Development Authority chairman, was withdrawn following his death.

SGS

In the SGS reference filed in 1997, it was alleged that Bhutto and her spouse had received kickbacks in a pre-shipment contract between the government and SGS. The court had court absolved all the accused except Zardari.

ARY case

The grant of licences to ARY Traders for import of gold and silver allegedly caused losses to the public exchequer, amounting to approximately Rs18.2 million.

Ursus tractors deal

Another reference, which pertains to the Ursus tractors deal, alleged misappropriation in the purchase of 5,900 Russian and Polish tractors for the Awami Tractor Scheme.

The court had acquitted the co-accused, Nawab Yousuf Talpur and AH Kango. The Ursus tractors purchase deal allegedly caused a loss of Rs268.3 million to ADBP and Rs1.67 billion to the State Bank of Pakistan.

Cotecna

This case involved the award for a contract for supervising pre-shipment at a Karachi port. The contract was allegedly awarded to the Swiss company Cotecna in exchange for a bribe during former prime minister Bhutto’s second term. Bhutto and her husband were accused of taking six per cent of the revenue stream the Swiss company expected on the $131 million contract.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2014.