RAWALPINDI: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Saturday challenged an accountability court’s decision to give a clean chit to former president and Co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Asif Ali Zardari in a reference pertaining to assets acquired through illegal means.

The NAB appealed to the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi Bench against the accountability court’s verdict on August 26, submitting that it has 22,000 verified documents as evidence against the former president which are related to offshore companies, Surrey palace and bank accounts.

“The most devastating aspect of the case is that the learned case, in an unprecedented manner, did not allow the prosecution to bring on record the most essential, convincing and reliable documentary evidence obtained from foreign country in the statement of the PW-38 namely Rizwan Ahmed,” reads the petition.

“The erstwhile Ehtesaab cell found tremendous amount of documentary evidence relating to the properties, bank accounts, other movable and immovable properties acquired by the accused abroad, which in no way proportionate to declared and known assets and sources of income of the accused.”

Earlier, Judge Khalid Mehmood Ranjha of Accountability Court No 1 had accepted an appeal requesting acquittal of the PPP co-chairman on the grounds that the reference filed by NAB has no legal standing.

Zardari had been exempted from appearing in the case owing to security concerns.

The reference against Zardari was filed before an accountability court in 2001, but was closed in 2007 under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) issued by the government of former military strongman, Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf.

The Supreme Court in its verdict in the NRO case on December 2009, had ordered the revival of all cases closed under the ordinance. However, by then Zardari had been sworn in as president and therefore, enjoyed immunity under Article 248 of the Constitution.

The PPP leader has faced a total of six corruption references, including SGS, Cotecna, Polo Ground, Ursus Tractors, ARY Gold corruption and illegal assets references. NAB reopened these references after Zardari had completed his term in office, but the former president had already been acquitted in five of the six references after a retrial before the accountability court.

However, Zardari’s lawyer Farooq Naek had earlier said that his client was acquitted in eight corruption references. Six cases were filed during Nawaz Sharif’s tenure while two were filed during Musharraf’s term in power, he added.

Two days after the accountability court had acquitted the former president in the illegal assets reference, Zardari addressed a press conference defending his acquittal in the final corruption case, saying that it was not the first time he had won a “politically motivated” case.

“It is very easy for people to say that I colluded with them (the government) to get these verdicts, but instead there has been a real struggle behind each of them,” he had said.

In a NAB-related development, Zardari had on Friday directed the Sindh government to reconsider its decision of repealing the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Ordinance 1999 in Sindh.

The law was repealed by the Sindh Assembly in the first week of April on the grounds that corruption was a provincial subject and that the accountability watchdog had no say in the matter.

Repealing the law, the Sindh government had passed ‘Sindh Accountability Act 2017’ under which ‘Sindh Accountability Agency’ was set up to probe corruption cases in the province.

After the law was passed, the opposition parties challenged it in court and announced a campaign against it saying, “PPP is trying to defend its corrupt politicians and bureaucrats that is why it repealed the NAB law in Sindh.”

“PPP is a party of federation and has always championed the cause of federation, but controversy has arisen with respect to repeal of the NAB Ordinance passed by the provincial assembly. So, the Sindh government may revisit the said act and bring it in consonance with similar laws prevailing in other provinces,” Zardari reportedly told Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.