ISLAMABAD: An accountability court of the federal capital on Friday cancelled the arrest warrant of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar issued by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in a case pertaining to assets beyond means.
While cancelling the arrest warrants, the accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir directed Ishaq Dar to furnish Rs01-million surety bonds. Ishaq Dar appeared before the court along with his legal counsel Qazi Misbah. When the hearing commenced, Qazi Misbah requested the court to permanently cancel the arrest warrants of his client along with the order to confiscate his assets.
The counsel stated that the court had issued the arrest warrants of his client to ensure his personal appearance before the court, thus now when his client has appeared, his arrest warrants may be canceled permanently. To a court’s query that whether NAB had also issued arrest warrants of Ishaq Dar, the NAB’s prosecutor stated that the Bureau had also issued Dar’s arrest warrants, however, these arrest warrants were suspended later on.
The court sought opinion of the NAB’s prosecutor about cancellation of Dar’s arrest warrants. The prosecutor supported the cancellation of warrants saying that they were issued to ensure appearance of Mr Dar in the case. The court then noted that it will have to indict Ishaq Dar once again as a supplementary reference has also been filed against him. Dar’s counsel then stated that he will present arguments on the supplementary reference.
Meanwhile, the court issued notices to NAB over the application filed against the confiscation of Dar’s property and permanent exemption from the personal appearance. The court also directed NAB to present its arguments at the next hearing on both the applications of Ishaq Dar and adjourning the hearing until October 12.
Earlier, last week, the court had suspended the arrest warrants of Dar till October 7 and directed the authorities to not arrest the Mr Dar upon his arrival in Pakistan. In 2017, an accountability court, while hearing a corruption reference against Dar, had declared him a proclaimed offender due to his continued absence from the proceedings.
The NAB accused Dar of possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. The case was filed by the NAB against Ishaq Dar following the Supreme Court’s July 28, 2017 verdict in the Panama Papers case. In Panama Papers case, the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the apex court from holding public office, after finding that he had been dishonest in not disclosing his employment in the Dubai-based Capital FZE company in his nomination papers.