ISLAMABAD: On Monday, an accountability court acquitted Ishaq Dar, a senior leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), in a case related to having assets beyond his known means.
The former finance minister was granted acquittal after his request for exoneration was accepted by the court, a decision that came following a favorable assessment by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
This case had been reopened by the anti-graft watchdog after the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that certain amendments to the NAB laws were invalid. In response, NAB submitted the assets beyond means case records against Ishaq Dar to the accountability court in Islamabad.
Notably, the same accountability court previously terminated the legal proceedings against Dar in this case in November of the previous year. At that time, the court asserted that it lacked the jurisdiction to render a decision or pass a verdict regarding pleas for acquittal under the National Accountability (Second Amendment) Act of 2022.
Judge Bashir, presiding over the case, stated, “We can neither announce a decision in favor of NAB nor can we issue a decision in favor of the suspect. The trial against Ishaq Dar ends here.”
Following changes to the National Accountability Ordinance of 1999 by the government, many courts across the country returned cases, as several matters no longer fell under their jurisdiction.
NAB initiated this case in December 2017 against Dar, alleging that he possessed assets that were inconsistent with his declared sources of income. This action against the PML-N leader stemmed from the Supreme Court’s verdict on July 28, 2017, related to the Panama Papers case.
Due to his continuous absence from the proceedings, Dar had previously been declared a proclaimed offender by the accountability court. However, in October 2022, the court suspended his arrest warrants after he appeared before it. Dar spent five years in self-exile in London, but he returned to Pakistan last year to assume his role as the finance minister after the formation of the coalition government.
