Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Thursday skipped an appearance at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Rawalpindi office.

The anti-graft watchdog had summoned the former prime minister in connection with an investigation related to £190m settlement from the UK at 10am.

Reports said that Imran Khan’s legal team had advised him not to appear before NAB in-person and, instead, to submit a written response to the 20 questions asked in relation to the corruption case, which also involves a property tycoon.

In a five-page written response submitted to the anti-graft body, the PTI chief informed the corruption watchdog that he was in Lahore and has been seeking bail in multiple cases which is why he does not have the time to join the investigation.

“I may however, add here that all the allegations made by you in the subject Call Up Notice are absolutely false, frivolous and concocted, and based on deliberate misconception of law and facts, and baseless conjectures and surmises. No case of corruption or corrupt practice is made not from the facts and circumstances existing on the record, rather the entire object of initiating the inquiry and investigation in the case is politically motivated and, to say the least, is based on facts extraneous to law,” the PTI chief told NAB.

The former prime minister also told NAB that he had only received one call up notice during the entire inquiry. He also added that he had challenged the notices sent earlier by it in the same and other cases as per law.

Khan also told the anti-graft watchdog that as per laws it is bound to provide a copy of the report of inquiry immediately if it is converted into an investigation to him which it did not do so.

“On the contrary, it was through a news report by Ansar Abbasi published in daily ‘The News’ of 30th April, 2023, that I came to know of the completion of inquiry and its conversion into investigation,” said the PTI chief.

Khan added that on May 2 he had dispatched a letter to NAB asking for a copy of the inquiry report yet it did not hand it over to him. He explained that due to the NAB’s failure, he had decided to approach the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to seek a copy of the report.

“Thus, on 09-05-2023, I was sitting in the biometric branch of the Islamabad High Court for getting my biometrics verified for the purpose of filing, inter alia, the said Writ Petition, when you manoeuvred my arrest in a manner that blatantly violated, inter alia, my fundamental right to access to justice, which is a component of my fundamental right to life, and thereby not only prevented me from getting my Writ Petition numbered after it had been diarised, you were also instrumental in my abduction from the High Court premises,” said the PTI chief.

He added that after his “illegal arrest” he was provided with a copy of the inquiry report.

“From the facts and circumstance narrated hereinabove it is abundantly clear that not only you had violated the provision of law by not providing me a copy of the inquiry report as mandated by the proviso to Section 18(c) of NAO, 1999, you had done so deliberately, and, being well aware of your illegal withholding of the said report of inquiry, and the fact that I was in the process of filing a Writ Petition seeking a direction of the honourable High Court for providing me a copy of the said report of inquiry, you, soon after taking me into custody pursuant to my illegal arrest, delivered to me a copy of the said inquiry report,” said the PTI chief.

The former prime minister added that he did not have the inquiry report with him as he left it behind with clothes and shaving kit when he was gone to attend the IHC hearing on May 12.