Pakistan: Imran Khan seeks acquittal in corruption case under NAB amendments

Imran Khan, the jailed former Pakistan prime minister has appealed to an accountability court seeking his acquittal in a 190 million pounds corruption case based on the amended anti-graft laws, which he had severely criticised earlier, according to media reports.

The 71-year-old founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had challenged the amendments to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) laws which were introduced by the then Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in 2022, as per a report by The Dawn newspaper.

However, a Supreme Court bench on September 15 last year had set aside the amendments, however, they were were restored by an apex court bench led by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa on September 15, 2023.

The amendments made several changes to the NAB laws, including reducing the term of the NAB chairman and prosecutor general to three years, limiting the bureau’s jurisdiction to cases involving over Pakistani Rs 500 million and transferring all pending inquiries, investigations, and trials to the relevant authorities.

The former cricketer-turned-politician’s legal team on Saturday said in their application that the amended law protected the decisions taken by the Federal Cabinet.

The application further contended that the NAB had initiated proceedings against their client as well as other accused persons at the behest of political rivals.

It said that the NAB despite being aware that the case does not fall within the ambit of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, exceeded its jurisdiction and filed a false and frivolous reference. The NAB alleged that as the prime minister of Pakistan, Khan chaired a cabinet meeting held on December 3, 2019, during which a deed of confidentiality was approved.

The application further stated that the bureau accused Khan of misusing his authority for the said approval and in return obtained approximately 458 kanal land in tehsil Sohawa, Pakistani Rs 285 million and other benefits under the guise of donations for the Al-Qadir University Project Trust.

The NAB alleged that the applicant (Khan) and his spouse, through their associate, received 240 kanal of land from a co-accused as compensation for personal gain.

Khan’s legal team said that the NAB filed the reference before the accountability court which framed the charge on February 27 this year against the applicant and his spouse under nine different counts.

Citing the amendment in the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) during 2022, the lawyers claimed that the amended law protected the decisions taken in the cabinet meeting.

The PTI chief’s counsel Usman Riaz Gill said the decision to take benefit of the amended NAO had been taken by the legal team.

Talking to the media following the proceeding in the accountability court, Khan said the NAB amendments were contradictory to the Constitution.

He said it had never happened in any parliament across the world that a law was approved to pardon plunder.

The former prime minister claimed that during the PTI government, the NAB was working under the command of then-army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. Now, he alleged, the incumbent chief of army staff was controlling the bureau.