ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday questioned the Supreme Court’s authority to make a judgement about his assets being beyond his means in a petition filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.

The finance minister filed the petition through his counsel Dr Tariq Hassan seeking a review of the July 28 Supreme Court judgement.

The court has also been requested to set aside its directive to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to file a corruption reference against him for possessing assets and funds beyond his known sources of income.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court should stay the filing of the reference against him until the review petition is heard and decided, the petition states.

This is the second petition seeking a review of the verdict in the Panama Papers case. On Aug 15, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif filed a similar petition questioning his unceremonious disqualification under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution.

Wants NAB to delay filing of reference against him until court decides review petition

Under Supreme Court rules, whenever a review petition is taken up, it will be heard by the same five-judge Supreme Court bench — headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa — that decided the Panama Papers case on a set of petitions moved by Imran Khan, Sirajul Haq and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.

In his petition, Mr Dar points out that the only allegation against him was based on his so-called confession, recorded on April 20, 2000 in the Hudabiya Paper Mills reference while he was in NAB custody, and contends that no such allegation was levelled in that case.

In the April 20 majority judgement, the Supreme Court had disposed of the allegations against him, stating that nothing significant had come forth against Mr Dar that would justify his disqualification, the petition said.

Moreover, the Supreme Court had not given any direction to the six-man Joint Investigation Team (JIT) regarding Mr Dar, and the probe team evidently exceeded its mandate through a whimsical and unauthorised fishing expedition about his assets, it claimed.

But the court, the petition lamented, had erred in law by issuing the direction, which prima facie was an error on the face of the record.

As is evident from his wealth reconciliation statement, filed on July 17 before the three-judge Supreme Court implementation bench on the Panama Papers case, the petition said, his net assets were Rs9 million on June 30, 1993, but rose to Rs831m by 2009.

It was a moot point whether a period of 16 years could be considered a short span of time, the petition argued, adding that it appeared to have escaped the notice of the court that in the next seven years, inclusive of the time he was finance minister, Mr Dar’s net assets declined to Rs544.27m as of June 30, 2016.

Moreover, the increase in each of the intervening years was explained by the annual income and wealth tax returns, available with the Federal Board of Revenue and NAB, the petition argued, adding that all his income tax returns were made available to the JIT.

Between 2002 and 2008, Mr Dar was a non-resident for tax purposes and, as per the provisions of the Income Tax Ordinance 2001, was not required to declare income earned abroad, it said, adding that at the beginning of the tax year 2008-09, when he became a resident again for tax purposes, his assets earned abroad, amounting to Rs837m, were merged with his local assets in the wealth statement for 2009.

When Mr Dar’s returns for 2009 and the previous years were accepted by the tax authorities, the petition asked, how could his assets be disproportionate to his known sources of income.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2017