Islamabad, Pakistan (BBN) – Pakistan’s Supreme Court has disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding public office following an investigation into corruption allegations.
The ruling comes after a probe into his family’s wealth following the 2015 Panama Papers dump linking Sharif’s children to offshore companies, reports BBC.
It comes amid heightened security in the capital, Islamabad.
Sharif has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the case.
The verdict was handed down unanimously by a five-member bench in the court, which was filled to capacity.
Pakistan’s renowned online newspaper dawn.com adds: Supreme Court Justice Asif Saeed Khosa started the court’s announcement of its verdict on the Panama Papers case shortly after 12:00pm.
Apologising for the delay, he gave the podium to Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, who headed the apex court’s implementation bench following its April 20 order on the case, to announce the judgement.
Justice Khan said the bench had recommended that all material collected by the JIT would be sent to an accountability court within six weeks, and that cases would be opened against Captain Muhammad Safdar, Maryam, Hassan and Hussain Nawaz as well as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. A judgement should be announced within 30 days, he said.
One judge will oversee the implementation of this order.
The prime minister was additionally disqualified from holding his office. The judges ruled that the prime minister had been dishonest to parliament and the courts and could not be deemed fit for his office.
The judgement was unanimous.
This is the third time the prime minister has been unable to complete his term in the chief executive’s office. It is unclear as of the moment who will be appointed to take over the post till the next general elections, which are scheduled for 2018.
THE LEAD UP
From Friday morning, all eyes were on Courtroom No. 1 of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, where a five-judge bench was set to announce the much-awaited verdict on the Panama Papers case at 11:30am. The proceedings started around half an hour later.
The original five-member bench of the Supreme Court which heard the Panama Papers case issued the final verdict. Justices Asif Saeed Khosa, Ejaz Afzal Khan, Gulzar Ahmed, Sheikh Azmat Saeed, Ijazul Ahsan were present for the hearing.
According to media reports, the courtroom was filled to capacity as prominent politicians, lawyers and journalists crowded the room to hear the judges decide Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s fate.
The twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi had been on high alert in anticipation of the SC verdict.
The Red Zone had also been partially sealed and people were only being allowed inside after undergoing identification and strict security checks.
Rangers and Frontier Constabulary personnel had been deployed at the Supreme Court and the Red Zone to assist the police.
SPECULATIONS BEFORE SC JUDGEMENT
Over the last few days, the entire country had been awaiting the apex court’s verdict with bated breath. Gossip, speculation and rumours had been rife over when the final verdict would be announced and what conclusion the judges would arrive at. The most important question of all remained whether the prime minister would be unseated or not.
On Thursday evening, the Supreme Court office had put all speculation to rest when it issued a supplementary cause list heralding the announcement of the judgement on Friday.
On the announcement that the larger bench would deliver the judgement, legal observers took the view that the earlier minority judgement, which recommended sending the prime minister packing, may become a majority view in case even one of the three majority judges ruled against the prime minister.
The court could also rule that there is still not enough evidence to topple Sharif, and call for a further investigation.
APRIL 20 ORDER AND JIT INVESTIGATION
The April 20 judgement issued by the larger bench in the Panama Papers case had been split 3-2 among the five judges, with two dissenting notes from Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Gulzar Ahmed. Justice Ejaz Afzal authored the majority opinion in the 540-page judgement.
The two judges who ruled against PM Nawaz Sharif had said he should be disqualified as he could not be considered ‘honest’ and ‘truthful’ (ameen and sadiq), whereas the other three were in favour of forming a joint investigation team (JIT) to definitively answer the question of whether the allegations against the prime minister were true or not.
The court had further said that: “upon receipt of the reports, periodic or final of the JIT, as the case may be, the matter of disqualification of respondent No. 1 [Nawaz Sharif] shall be considered. If found necessary for passing an appropriate order in this behalf, [Nawaz Sharif or any other person may be summoned and examined.”
A special bench of the Supreme Court was subsequently constituted to examine the case under Section 184/3 of the Constitution. The bench comprised the three judges who had prevailed.
The Sup­reme Court had on May 6 formed the JIT, putting a senior officer of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in charge.
After considering the background and antecedents of the officer, FIA’s Additional Director General Wajid Zia, a grade 21 officer, was appointed head of the probe team.
Amer Aziz of the State Bank of Pakistan, Executive Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan Bilal Rasool, National Accountability Bureau Director Irfan Naeem Mangi, Brig Muha­mmad Nauman Saeed of Inter-Services Intelligence and Brig Kamran Khurshid of the Military Intelligence were appointed as the remaining members of the team.
The six-member JIT’s damning report, submitted after a 60-day investigation that sought answers to 13 questions raised by the Supreme Court’s larger bench, had maintained that Prime Minister’s family owned assets beyond its known sources of income. It declared that both Hussain and Hassan Nawaz were used as proxies to build family assets.
Consequently, the six-man JIT concluded that it was compelled to refer to sections 9(a)(v) and 14(c) of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) 1999, which deal with corruption and corrupt practices, though such charges are yet to be proven in an accountability court.
The JIT report also highlighted Articles 122, 117, 129 and other sections of the Qanoon-i-Shahadat Order 1984 (Law of Evidence), which places the burden of disproving the allegations on the person facing accusations.
The JIT pointed out failure on the part of the Sharifs to produce the required information that would confirm their “known sources of income”, saying that prima facie, it amounted to saying that they were not able to reconcile their assets with their means of income.
The prime minister’s daughter, Maryam Nawaz, had on the same evening issued a strongly-worded statement on behalf of the PML-N, saying:
“JIT report REJECTED. Every contradiction will not only be contested but decimated in SC. NOT a penny of public exchequer involved: PMLN.”
Her tweet followed a press conference conducted by four senior PML-N leaders, who had taken turns to criticise the JIT report as ‘serving Imran Khan’s agenda’.
The Sharif family’s legal team’s strategy in subsequent hearings had focused on discrediting the report, the evidence collected and the means used to do so, and raising questions about the impartiality and capability of the six men who had comprised the JIT.
Indian Zeenews adds: The Pakistan court further ordered to register a case against Sharif and directed the National Accountability Board to file its reference against him and his family within six weeks.
Around 3,000 armed police and paramilitary forces were deployed both inside and around the court in Islamabad during the ruling.
The court had in April declared there was “insufficient evidence” to oust Sharif over the graft allegations engulfing his family, and ordered an investigation team to probe the matter.
The team of civilian and military investigators found there was a “significant disparity” between the Sharif family`s income and lifestyle in its report, which was released to the public and submitted to the court earlier this month.
It sparked an uproar with some of its findings, including the claim that documents regarding Sharif`s daughter Maryam and her link to some of the family`s London properties were “falsified” — dated 2006, but typed in Microsoft`s Calibri font, which was not released for commercial use until 2007.
The Sharifs and their allies have consistently and noisily rejected the claims against them, with his ruling PML-N party this month dismissing the investigation team`s report as “trash”.
BBN/AS/ANS