Pak anti-corruption court issues arrest warrant against Dar
ISLAMABAD:A Pakistani anti-graft court on Monday issued a bailable arrest warrant against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar after he failed to appear before it in a corruption case linked to the Panama Papers scandal.
The accountability court dismissed Dar’s application seeking exemption from personal appearance in the case hearing.
Dar’s counsel Khawaja Haris appeared in the court of judge Muhammad Bashir and sought Dar’s exemption from appearance as he was in London to seek medical treatment.
But the court rejected the plea and issued bailable arrest warrant and ordered him to appear in the next hearing on November 2.
The case was filed against Dar by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) following a verdict by the Supreme Court, which disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after an investigation into corruption allegations against his family.
Dar has so far appeared before the court seven times since the trial began. Earlier, he missed the first hearing on September 20. It is the second hearing that he missed.
Proceedings in the trial could not advance today due to Dar’s absence, even though prosecution witness Abdul Rehman Gondal, branch manager of a private bank’s parliament branch, had appeared in the court with two gunny bags full of documents related to the minister’s bank accounts.
Haris stated in the application that Dar, after attending the 16th Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Ministerial Conference in Dushanbe, had travelled to Jeddah.
He said the minister fell ill in Jeddah and subsequently had to go to London for medical treatment.
The court had indicted Dar last month in the case for owning assets “beyond his known sources of income”.
At the last hearing on October 23, the court recorded statements of NAB’s witnesses.