A judge of Islamabad’s Accountability Court (not the one who is at the centre of controversy in a video leak scandal) has summoned Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice-president Maryam Nawaz Sharif on an appeal filed by the National Accountability Bureau
(NAB) seeking action against the daughter of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for submitting a ‘fake’ trust deal in the Avenfield properties case.
The order came from Justice Mohammad Bashir who issued notices to Maryam to appear before the court on July 19 and explain her position.
It may be mentioned here that Maryam was convicted in the same reference one year before and the same judge of the Accountability Court on July 6, 2018, had convicted her and her father Nawaz Sharif in the Avenfield properties case, sentencing her to seven and her father to ten years’ imprisonment, respectively. Later, Maryam’s sentence was suspended by the Islamabad High Court.
The Accountability Court judge on Tuesday, while taking up the NAB plea, inquired NAB Deputy Prosecutor General Muzaffar Abbasi about legal grounds to summon Maryam who is already convicted in the reference. The NAB prosecutor was of the view that it was in the court’s jurisdiction to initiate action against Maryam under Section 30 of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, read with serial number three of the Schedule of NAO, 1999.
In serial three of the NAO, it is stated that giving false information or fabricating false evidence during an inquiry into or investigation of an offence by NAB or any agency authorised by NAB” entails “rigorous imprisonment for a term, which may extend to five years”, the prosecutor further submitted.
