Ex-president Asif Zardari to be indicted in a graft case on September 9

ISLAMABAD: An Islamabad-based accountability court rejected on Monday former president and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari’s bail plea in the Toshakhana case and decided to indict him and other accused on September 9.
Zardari and former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Yousuf Raza Gilani have been accused by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog, for illegally receiving luxury vehicles and gifts from the Toshakhana ((gift depository) by paying only 15% of the price of those vehicles and gifts.
According to the NAB, the evidence collected during the course of inquiry and investigation established that Gilani, in order to extend illegal benefit to Zardari and Sharif, had allowed them to retain vehicles gifted to them by different foreign states and dignitaries.
The anti-graft body maintained that Zardari had received expensive cars as a gifts from Libya and the UAE as president but did not deposit them in the Toshakhana.
The prosecutor told the court that the NAB had decided to seize the vehicles of Zardari and Sharif, two BMWs and a Lexus owned by the former president and a Mercedes-Benz owned by the former PM.
The court has already issued a bailable arrest warrant for Zardari. Last week, the court had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant for Nawaz Sharif and directed the foreign office to implement the arrest orders through the Pakistan high commission in the UK. Sharif had challenged the accountability court’s proceedings against him in the Islamabad high court.
Jahangi Jadoon, Sharif’s counsel, told the court that a petition pertaining to the case filed on behalf of his client was pending in the Islamabad HC and urged the judge to adjourn proceedings until the high court issued a verdict.
Zardari's counsel, Farooq H Naek, said pre-arrest bail surety bonds had already been submitted and he would appeal to the court to question the former president through a video link owing to his deteriorating health and Covid-19 concerns.
The court accepted Jadoon’s request and adjourned the hearing until September 9. The judge also directed the authorities to suspend measures to declare Sharif a proclaimed offender.
The court will frame charges against Zardari and Gilani in the Toshakhana case during the next hearing.
Zardari’s son, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto, was also present alongside his father for the hearing. Speaking to reporters outside the court, Bilawal accused the current regime of playing “psychological games” with him and his family and “threatening" him to change his political stance or his father, party colleagues and workers would be targeted.