Daily Times

KARACHI: An accountability court has adjourned the hearing of two corruption cases against former petroleum minister Dr Asim Hussain till March 4, 2016.

Dr Asim is facing corruption charges for allegedly depriving the public exchequer of Rs 462 million by misusing his authority to get land allotted illegally, encroaching upon the state land for expansion of Dr Ziauddin Hospital, money laundering and receiving kickbacks.

The court put off the cases due to the absence of Dr Asim who could not be produced to due his ailment.

At the outset, his lawyer objected to the documentary evidence presented by the manager of a private bank, saying that the documents were not handed over to them and they should have been placed on record before the indictment of his client.

This showed the fake cases were instituted against his client, he said that requested the judge to issue notice to the National Accountability Bureau’s chairman to show up in court.

Earlier, the court had indicted the former petroleum minister Dr Asim Hussain along with five others in the Rs462 billion corruption reference.

Dr Asim Hussain is also facing another reference for illegally awarding multi-billion gas processing contracts to Jamshoro Joint Venture Limited and thus embezzling Rs 17 billion.

According to he National Accountability Bureau, the accused allowed the JJVL to process gas at different gas fields without conducting an open auction, signing agreements and memorandums of understanding as required by law, thus causing a loss of Rs 17.4 billion to the national exchequer.

Other accused included SSGC managing director Khalid Rehman and former officials Zuhair Siddiqui, Azeem Iqbal, Shoaib Warsi, Yusuf Jamil Ansari and Malik Usman, OGDCL former managing director Basharat Mirza and official, Zahid Bakhtiar and JJVL chief executive officer, Iqbal Z Ahmed.

The former federal minister is also facing a case pertaining to the charges of harbouring criminals and terrorists by financing and providing medical assistances at his hospitals.

MQM leaders Waseem Akhtar, Rauf Siddiqui, Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) leader Anees Qaimkhani, PPP leader Qadir Patel, Pakistan Pasban leader Usman Moazzam and others are also facing the same charges before an anti-terrorism court (ATC).