Daily Times

Lahore: Legal experts note that the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has gone beyond its jurisdiction in suggesting to the Supreme Court (SC) that a reference be filed against the Sharif family members in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). They say the JIT had been tasked just with collection of evidence on money trail of Sharif family’s offshore wealth. Nonetheless, experts hold that the report submitted by the JIT to the SC implementation bench augur well for the Sharif family either.

Since the prime minister’s daughter Maryum Nawaz Sharif has been found by the JIT to be the beneficial owner of offshore properties, a reference is likely to be sent to the Election Tribunal for proceeding against her husband MNA Captain (retd) Safdar for not mentioning the companies as his spouse’s assets in declarations filed with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

A similar reference can be filed against PM Nawaz Sharif only if the JIT in its report has found Maryam Nawaz to be his dependent at the time when she was holding stakes in offshore properties, says lawyer Jahanzeb Sukhera.

Further, Sukhera says, the JIT’s finding of forged documents would lead to criminal prosecution against all those found to be involved in the matter.

The evidence presented to the SC bench provides enough grounds to implicate the prime minister in an accountability reference.

What remains interesting is how the Apex court refers the matter to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) since, over the course of the Panama Papers trial as well as earlier, the SC has expressed strongly-worded condemnations of the bureau’s conduct.

In the Panama Papers trial, the bureau was criticised for not appealing the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) verdict in the Hudaibya Paper Mills case.

Though, lawyer Asad Jamal notes, that the prosecution maintains the right to pursue a matter or not on the basis of cogent reasons.

“Many big crimes across the world don’t get prosecuted purely because the likelihood of getting anything beneficial for the larger public good out of the exercise is low,” he says.

He adds whether the conduct of prosecution in such instances is malafide or not is another matter, however.

The disqualification of the prime minister is unlikely simply on the basis of the fact that the Sharif family has been unable to account for its assets, says Sukhera.

Published in Daily Times, July 11^th , 2017.