ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday sent a loud and clear message to all involved in the Panama Papers leaks case that it would not be dictated by people’s wishes.

“A lot of people are saying that we are proceeding very slowly but we are not,” Justice Asif Saeed Khosa observed and said the court would keep listening to everyone in the case until it made up its mind and until the ends of justice were met.

Legal observers following the Panamagate case believe that the observation came on the heels of continuous media talks by the camps of both the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf soon after the conclusion of the court proceedings everyday in which accusations were hurled and assertions made, sometimes even against the judiciary.

Also on Jan 23, Justice Khosa, who is heading a five-judge SC bench hearing the Panama Papers case, had suggested to the two parties to keep their comments to themselves and allow the court to proceed.

“Enough barbs have been traded on the roads by the parties and now they should keep their commentaries to themselves and the court should be allowed to proceed, while they should wait for the outcome,” he had observed.

On Friday, the apex court asked Prosecutor General of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Waqas Qadeer Dar to submit by Monday details of the pardon the bureau had granted to Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills reference.

NAB prosecutor general told to submit details of pardon granted to Dar in Hudaibiya reference

In his April 25, 2000, statement before a district magistrate in Lahore, Mr Dar had confessed to his alleged involvement in the money laundering of $14.86 million (about Rs1.2bn) on behalf of the Sharifs.

The NAB prosecutor general is also required to inform the court whether the pardon granted to Mr Dar was conditional or unconditional.

Justice Khosa regretted that the Hudaibiya Paper Mills reference, which had remained in the cold storage for 12 years as it was adjourned sine die in 2007 because the Sharifs were in exile, had been quashed by the Lahore High Court in 2014 during the present government after Qamar Zaman Chaudhry was appointed NAB chairman in consultation with the leader of the house (prime minister) and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Shah.

The high court’s referee judge, Justice Sardar Shamim, had quashed the reference on March 11, 2014, on the grounds that if re-investigation was allowed against the Sharif family now, it would provide the investigators an opportunity to pad up the loopholes.

“This Rs1.2bn goes absolutely unaccounted for since no challenge to the decision of the high court was made,” Justice Khosa said, adding that the apex court might also mull over the high court’s decision to examine whether it was legally correct and then might also consider the petitioner’s (Imran Khan) request to order NAB to file a belated appeal in the Supreme Court against the 2014 high court’s verdict rejecting the NAB’s plea for reopening corruption references against the Sharifs in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case.

The judge recalled that the Supreme Court had in an Ogra case against its former chairman Tauqir Sadiq held that the high court judgement could not become a stumbling block, even though it might have attained finality, in the way of exercising the apex court’s jurisdiction under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.

While pointing towards Advocate Shahid Hamid, the counsel for Ishaq Dar, Justice Khosa said whether he or the high court had ever considered that the case was quashed on merit. This Rs1.2bn belonged to the country, he observed.

The counsel contended that Mr Dar had made the confessional statement under duress because soon after the Oct 12, 1999, coup, in which the then Nawaz Sharif government was sent packing, his client was put under house arrest and he had remained detained for 23 months and even spent two-and-a-half months in a dungeon at the Attock Fort. He remained under military custody till Sept 2001.

“They (Pervez Musharraf government) even asked him (Mr Dar) to cooperate by offering that if he plays ball with them he will be inducted into the then government,” the counsel claimed.

At this, Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan observed that the court had already held that this confessional statement was just a piece of paper having no evidentiary value unless proved in accordance with the law. “This cannot be considered at the moment for any purpose,” he said.

“It is a piece of evidence but never utilised,” said Justice Khosa, adding that it was critical to know when the pardon had been granted to Mr Dar. If the pardon had been granted before the confessional statement then Mr Dar would no longer be an accused, rather an approver, but if it had been granted after his confession then he would be treated under a different law since he would then be considered as a prosecution witness.

“We will have to examine whether the accused was correct in quashing the reference,” Justice Khosa said.

If the pardon preceded the confession, Mr Dar must have been accused in many other cases, which he was not, the counsel said.

This was relevant that he had been given pardon after he made a confession as approver, Justice Khosa said and told the counsel that since he had access to his client, he should have these documents to satisfy the court.

But the counsel argued that even after the pardon his client had been kept under the custody and recalled that Lt Gen Syed Mohammad Amjad, the first chairman of NAB, had once visited his client and told him that if there had been anything against him, Mr Dar would have been facing a whole lot of cases for being ministers of finance and commerce.

Published in Dawn January 28th, 2017