NAB withdraws two corruption cases against Malik

RAWALPINDI: The National Accountability Bureau informed an accountability court on Monday that two corruption references filed by the bureau 13 years ago against Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other officials of the Federal Investigation Agency were ‘not genuine’ and it did not want to further prosecute the cases.

Additional Prosecutor General Malik Jamil Awan defended the bureau’s decision to withdraw the references filed under section 31-B of NAB Ordinance, 1999. He apologised for the fake cases registered against the FIA officials.

When Mr Awan started speaking about innocence of the interior minister and Sajjad Haider, the co-accused in the two cases the bureau has been pursuing since 1995, Accountability Court-IV Judge Chuadhry Abdul Haq directed him to produce law points in favour of withdrawal of the NAB application and record of all applications filed by the bureau in high courts and the Supreme Court in the cases.

The judge asked the APG not to speak about merits of the references and only cite laws relating to withdrawal of the cases.

Mr Awan said the alleged involvement of the interior minister and other FIA officials in a raid on the house of Hashim Raza Rizvi could not be proved. He said Mr Malik was not heading the raiding team which was following the orders of then interior minister Naseerullah Babar.

He said that Mr Malik being the additional director general of FIA had to follow the orders of the then interior minister to raid the house of the alleged human and narcotics smuggler.

About the allegation levelled by Hashim Raza’s brother Abbas Raza that the FIA team had looted 20 tolas of jewellery and Rs700,000, Mr Awan said the complainant did not object to the recovery of a memo prepared at that time and the case was registered three years later.

About the second reference in which Mr Malik was accused of receiving two cars worth Rs1.798 million from Toyota Central Motors in Karachi through deputy director Wasim Ahmed as an illegal gratification for the purchase of vehicles by the FIA worth tens of millions of rupees, the APG said the cars had not been taken as commission and no FIA official was involved in the purchase of cars in 1995.

The NAB lawyer produced an affidavit of the then director general of FIA about non-involvement of Mr Malik and said no FIA official was on the committee for purchasing the cars.

He claimed that Saleem Godail, who was managing director of the Toyota Central Motors, had already said he received Rs820,000 for one car and got back the second car.

The APG said Mr Malik had been kept in jail for 11 months in 1997 without obtaining a judicial custody order from a competent court.

The accountability court stopped Advocate Ghufran Khursheed Imtiazi from challenging pleadings of the prosecutor because he had not submitted the legal attorney to represent Hashim Raza, the complainant in one of the cases.

Advocate Imtiazi told Dawn that the court could not allow withdrawal of the case registered on the complaint of an individual whose grievances had not been addressed.

The hearing was adjourned till July 1.

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