Pakistan’s embattled Finance Minister and ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s close aide Ishaq Dar on Monday appeared before an anti-corruption court in Islamabad for the seventh time in his trial in a Panama Papers graft case.
At Monday’s hearing, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecution presented two new witnesses against the Minister, Dawn reported.
On September 8, the NAB filed the case against 67-year-old Mr. Dar following the July 28 verdict of the Supreme Court in the that indicted Mr. Sharif and his family.
The apex court also disqualified Mr. Sharif and ordered corruption cases against him , his children Maryam, Husain and Hasan and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar.
The first witness, Abdul Rehman Gondal, the manager of a private bank’s Parliament branch, has completed his statement and is being cross-examined by Mr. Dar’s counsel Khawaja Haris, the report said.
Mr. Gondal provided details of the account held by Mr. Dar in the bank. He informed the court that the NAB summoned him along with relevant documents on August 16 and he submitted the requisite record concerning Dar to the NAB’s investigating officer, it said.
Mr. Gondal said he had provided bank statements of Mr. Dar ranging from March 25, 2005 to August 16, 2017 to the NAB. The bank transaction details provided by the witness were made part of the case record by the court, the report said.
Second witness Masood Ghani, operations manager in a private bank, has not given his testimony yet.
On Wednesday, the court adjourned the hearing of the graft cases till October 23 after the Minister’s senior counsel left the country in a rush.
In the preceding hearing of the case, Mr. Haris had cross-questioned Al-Baraka Islamic Bank’s assistant vice president Tariq Javed — the prosecution’s third witness.
The court indicted Mr. Dar last month in a NAB case pertaining to his owning assets “beyond his known sources of income”.
On October 19, the anti-graft court indicted Mr. Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law in a corruption case related to the Avenfield properties in London.
The case was one of the three cases registered by the NAB on September 8 against 67-year-old Mr. Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad.
