The PTI Chairman has submitted hat the amendments to NAB law benefited Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, former prime ministers Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervez Ashraf, the incumbent speaker of the National Assembly, and Senator Saleem Mandviwalla.
ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-Oct 4th, 2022) The Supreme Court will take up today the plea of PTI Chairman Imran Khan challenging amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999.
A SC three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Umer Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsen and Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, will hear the plea.
PTI Chairman through its lawyer Khwaja Haris, had filed an application under Rule 6 of SC Rules 180 for the placing on record of documents in the petition, challenging the NAB Ordinance 1999 amendments.
The PTI Chairman submitted hat the amendments to NAB law benefited Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, former prime ministers Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervez Ashraf, the incumbent speaker of the National Assembly, and Senator Saleem Mandviwalla.
The counsel submitted that since Sept 1, 2022, a large number of references pending with the accountability courts throughout Pakistan had been sent back to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the light of the amendments which had been impugned in the titled petition, the accountability courts no longer had jurisdiction to try these cases.
He submitted that the references thus returned pertain to offences falling inter alia under Sections 9(a)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi),(ix),(x),(xii), of the NAO, 1999, and have been so returned by invoking provisions of inter alia sections 1(2), 2, 4(a)-(g), 5(o) and 9(a)(vi) of NAO. 1999.
The counsel had earlier argued that additionally, there were a large number of references (more than 90 percent of pending references, if not all) which were also hit by the impugned amendments, but had not yet been disposed of returned by the accountability courts.
He told the court that there were numerous (if not all) pending enquiries and investigations which had been or were in the process of being similarly wound up in the light of the provisions introduced to the NAO by the impugned amendments.
Besides it, he also submitted that ex-president Asif Ali Zardari had recently sought a long adjournment from the Accountability Court, No. III, Islamabad, because he intended to file a fresh application ‘in pursuance of the newly amended NAB Act, 2022’, besides an earlier application filed by him under the previously amended law.
He submitted that the NAB utilised a sum of Rs3.9, 9.0 and 5.1 billion respectively, i.e a total of Rs18 billion for filing and prosecuting these cases during the financial years 2018–19, 2019–2020, and 20–21, the NAB had, in terms of incurring expenses for inquiring into, investigating, and prosecuting references pertaining to offences falling under the NAO, 1999.
He argued that this huge sum of Rs18 billion had gone down the drain pursuant to the impugned amendments to the law.
The counsel also said that simultaneously, all such references pending against the former and incumbent holders of public office, and their associates, aiders and abettors, as well as private persons, on charges of misappropriation of hundreds of billions of rupees belonging to the people of Pakistan, had been brought to naught.
Khan told the court that the bulk of the references filed by the NAB and which were or are pending with the accountability courts are in respect of offences under sections 9(a)(v), 9(a)(vi) and 9(a)(ix) of the NAO, 1999.
He stated that these offences had been radically affected, both substantively and as regards prerequisites for proving the same, by the impugned amendments.
The petitioner said it had primarily been accomplished by amending or substituting sections 2, 4(a) to 4(g), and 4(3), 5(b), (c), (da), (o), and (q), 9(a) (v) and (vi), 9(a) (vii), 9(a) (ix), 14, 16, 19, and 25(e), provisos to 25 (b), 26 and 31-A of the NAO, 1999.
