The Accountability Court on Wednesday asked National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to produce Wajid Zia, a prosecution witness and head of joint investigation team (JIT) that probed the Panama Papers case, on the next hearing. Hearing corruption reference against Dar, Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Bashir asked the NAB to produce Zia and NAB Investigation Officer Nadir Abbas to record their statements on the next hearing to be held on February 8.
During previous hearing, the court had asked the NAB prosecution team to produce Zia and Abbas on January 31 but they did not appear before the court. During the course of proceedings, Special Prosecutor NAB Imran Shafiq requested the court to issue formal summons to Zia, to which the judge said that he is the prosecution witness and NAB should itself produce him in the court.
The judge further said that he will issue summons if Zia does not appear before the court on the next hearing. Zia and Abbas are the two last witnesses in Dar's case. The court recorded statements of Joint Registrar Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Sidrah Mansoor and Deputy Registrar SECP, Salman Saeed. Mansoor submitted additional documents regarding Dar's companies registered with the SECP before the court. Salman Saeed also submitted details of Dar's companies.
After the statement of Sidrah, Saeed requested the court to grant him sometime for presenting the record, saying the documents have been dispatched from Karachi. The court adjourned the hearing for sometime.
Later, the NAB again requested for more time as there was some delay. The judge said that the NAB prosecution should provide record immediately as due to load-shedding, electricity to all computers is being supplied through uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
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