Skip to main content

‘The case has no rationale, Nawaz tells court during Al-Azizia reference hearing

Nawaz Sharif

ISLAMABAD: An accountability court resumed hearing into Al-Azizia Steel Mills reference against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif today (Friday), ARY News reported.

The prosecutor of National Accountability Bureau presented arguments in the case for the second day today. The proceedings are conducted by the accountability court Judge Arshad Malik.

In his statement before the court today, Mr Sharif said the case of Al-Azizia dates back to 1973, when a gulf steel mills was set up in Dubai. He told the court that the reference of Al-Azizia had no rationale.

The judge intervened, saying ‘we will listen to your arguments later on and we will also put some questions before you regarding money trial.”

He explained that the money sent by his son from abroad was nothing unusual. “Sons often give money to their fathers and this is deemed as honour for any father.”

Yesterday (Nov 29), the court had directed the counsel of NAB to furnish final arguments in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills reference against former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

The accountability court had also given a questionnaire to the former PM under section 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, to seek his answers. NAB prosecutor, Wasiq Malik, during his arguments, said the accused persons were given ample chance before the JIT, Supreme Court and the NAB to defend the charges, but their proofs turned out to be false, he claimed.

He said foreign assets of Mian Nawaz Sharif and his relatives were discovered after unraveling of the Panama Papers.

‘The State is like a mother and it can ask questions regarding excess of wealth of leaders of the country,’ he argued.

During the hearing on Nov 28, NAB’s deputy prosecutor general had requested the court to issue directives to the defence side to first give final arguments in the case as the accused has submitted some fresh documents in his defence.

The court had given over 120 questions to Mr Sharif in the Avenfield properties reference and 151 in the Al-Azizia reference. The former prime minister has so far responded to 148 of the 151 questions.

On November 19, the Supreme Court gave three weeks to the accountability court to wrap up graft references against Nawaz Sharif.

The post ‘The case has no rationale, Nawaz tells court during Al-Azizia reference hearing appeared first on ARYNEWS.



from ARYNEWS https://ift.tt/2FPvHtY
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more