Daily Times

An accountability court in Islamabad on Wednesday reserved its decision on a plea from National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) President Saeed Ahmed seeking his acquittal in a reference related to the assets of former finance minister Ishaq Dar.

The NBP president has been nominated as a co-accused in the reference filed against the former finance minister for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income. Ahmed has been charged with opening up bank accounts allegedly used for money laundering.

During the hearing, Ahmed’s counsel Advocate Hashmat Habib pleaded the court to not charge his client even if NAB statements were taken to be correct. “NAB laws do not apply to the accusations levelled against my client,” the counsel said.

NAB’s special prosecutor Imran Shafiq told the court that he still needed to present over 50 witnesses in the case, urging it to grant time for the purpose. He further said that the fraud had been committed with great expertise, adding that it was not easy to transfer such a huge sum of money and that the accused would have needed the services of an expert to bring the amount to Pakistan without raising suspicion.

The NAB prosecutor continued, “Ahmed advised the accused in opening accounts to transfer the money. Now he can’t say that he had no knowledge regarding the accounts that were opened.”

He told the court that Ahmed was the deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) when transactions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were made from Dar’s account, but he took no action.

The NAB prosecutor said that the former finance minister submitted nomination papers for Senate elections held in March despite being declared a proclaimed offender. He said another bank account was opened for Dar in NBP during the time of the Senate election to facilitate him in participating in the polls.

Further during the hearing, the statement of prosecution witness and National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) General Manager Ghazali Zahid was recorded.

The hearing of the case has been adjourned till June 20.

Published in Daily Times, June 14^th 2018.