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Friday March 29, 2024

NAB wants ECP to provide asset details of Dar, declare him PO

By Numan Wahab
July 18, 2018

LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau has asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to provide asset details of former finance minister Ishaq Dar and declared him a proclaimed offender (PO).

It has been learnt that the anti-graft body has written to the ECP and requested for asset details of former senator, which he had mentioned in his nomination papers.

Sources told this scribe that the bureau would write to all departments concerned for provision of asset details of Ishaq Dar. They said new details of assets would be incorporated in the reference already pending with the accountability court, in which he was declared a proclaimed offender.

In July 2017, a five-member Supreme Court bench had ordered NAB to file three references against disgraced prime minister Nawaz Sharif and one against Dar, on the petitions, filed by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Imran Khan, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Sirajul Haq and Awami Muslim League’s Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.

In its first set of references against the former finance minister, NAB stated that “the accused acquired assets and pecuniary interests/ resources in his own name and/ or in the name of his dependents of an approximate amount of Rs831.678 million”.

The reference alleged that the assets were “disproportionate to his known sources of income for which he could not reasonably account for”. After filing of the reference against Dar, the bureau had also filed a supplementary reference against him, containing further details about bank accounts, owned by Dar and his companies. The accounts have held as much as Rs482.84 million at various points. Moreover, transaction of $4.06 million was made through these accounts.

Later, in Dec 2017, an accountability court had declared Ishaq Dar a proclaimed offender due to his continuous absence from the proceedings. Meanwhile, an accountability court in Lahore extended physical remand for one day of top bureaucrat Fawad Hassan Fawad, also former principal secretary to PM, and an accused in Ashiana-e-Iqbal Housing project scam.

The NAB officials produced Fawad before the court under strict security arrangements and pleaded with the court to grant his 15-day physical remand. As per case details, the bureau had arrested Fawad over charges of misusing his authority as being the secretary implementation of former Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and causing loss of billion to the national exchequer.