The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday initiated proceedings on PML-N stalwart Hanif Abbasi's petition seeking the disqualification of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Secretary General Jahangir Tareen over the alleged non-disclosure of assets, existence of offshore companies, as well as receiving foreign funding for PTI.

Before the hearing formally started, the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar asked if every disqualification case would now be brought to the apex court.

"It is Tareen today, tomorrow it will be some other member of the Parliament," he observed. "This has to stop somewhere. There are other forums which can look into these matters."

To this, Abbasi's counsel Azid Nafees replied that the case was brought before the apex court in light of the Panamagate case, but the answer did not entirely satisfy the bench. Nonetheless the hearing proceeded as scheduled.

As the arguments commenced, Nafees, while presenting his evidence, claimed that Tareen had concealed the fact that he owns agricultural land.

The lawyer further alleged that Tareen did not pay taxes on the land, and also that his company had received loans worth Rs49 million which were later written off.

He also brought up a fine worth Rs70 million levied by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan on Tareen for 'insider trading'. The judges noted that this had happened 12 years ago and in any case signalled that Tareen had been keen to clear his name of any wrongdoing.

"Tareen has [also] gone on record to say that his children own offshore companies — these facts mean that he is not sadiq and ameen anymore," the petitioner's lawyer continued. "Tareen gave his children monetary gifts too," he added.

Upon this, the judges asked: "How is giving one's children gifts equivalent to not being sadiq and ameen?"

The judges pointed out that it was clear from the documents submitted that Tareen had given money to his children as gifts, and that there is nothing illegal about giving or receiving monetary gifts within the family.

"The gifts were a front to create benami fortunes," the lawyer argued.

To which the chief justice responded: "How do we take this assumption to be true?"

During his arguments, Nafees referred to the Panamagate case, in which a joint investigation team was created to look into the offshore companies of the prime minister's children and the sources of money used to set up the businesses.

He advanced the argument that the investigating team had also looked into the practice of giving gifts, but this was shot down by the bench, who told the counsel to "forget about the JIT." The reasoning provided was that the sources of funding were not clear in the Panamagate case, which was not so in the case pertaining to Tareen.

"What do you want from us?" Chief Justice Nisar asked Abbasi's counsel, adding that the court would not summon Tareen's tax returns and that his children's tax returns were confidential.

At this point, Tareen's lawyer said that Abbasi's counsel wanted the court to summon the tax returns so that they may be able to find something to build a case on.

"We're not here to scrutinise Tareen's tax records — this is the responsibility of the tax authorities," the chief justice remarked. "We're only looking at how [Tareen's] offshore companies were set up."

"The real question should be how much money was used to set up the offshore company and whether there were sufficient funds available [to Tareen] abroad to set it up," he added.

The bench later posited several questions for Tareen to answer, including: how and when was the offshore company set up; who is the legal and beneficial owner of the company; how much money was used to set it up; how was the money transferred abroad to set up the company.

The hearing of the case was adjourned till Thursday, July 27.