Corruption cases against Nawaz, sons: AC reserves order regarding final arguments

The Accountability Court hearing corruption cases against former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his sons reserved judgement with respect to opening of final arguments in Al-Aziza Steel Mill reference whether by the defence or the prosecution. At the start of hearing, Prosecutor National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Wasiq Malik said that accused Nawaz Sharif had produced some documents in his defence and, therefore, under the law defence counsel Khawaja Haris will open final arguments in the case. The defence should make it clear what the objective behind producing these documents before the court was, he said.
Haris adopted the stance that the accused did not produce these documents in his defence. He said his client had answered in negative when he was asked if he (Nawaz Sharif) would produce any evidence in his defence. He said that he will not argue over these documents in this court and Islamabad High Court.
The documents produced by Sharif included order sheet of the Supreme Court and the petition filed by the accused in the apex court, he said, adding that under the law verbal or documentary defence is produced through witness before the court. "If we had produced these documents as defence then we had formally requested the court to make them part of the record," he said.
Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Arshad Malik observed that defence counsel stated thrice that the documents were not produced as defence and then what further he would say.
On this the NAB prosecutor requested the court to issue an appropriate judgement in this regard. The judge reserved the judgment and observed he would issue a proper order in this regard.
Nawaz Sharif was present in the courtroom during the course of hearing who was later allowed to go.
Later, Haris started cross-examination of Muhammad Kamran, prosecution witness and investigation officer of NAB, in Flagship reference.
To a question, Kamran said that fresh documents related to Hassan Nawaz Sharif's properties were not available with land registry department in UK. He had asked land registry department regarding fresh ownership of properties, he added. "I had told land registry department to provide details of Hassan's properties," he said while responding to a question asked by Haris.
He said that land registry department told him to write the date of October 31, 2015 on form for getting historical record at the time of filing application for obtaining record of Hassan's properties.
Kamran said that the same date was also mentioned on the documents he received from land registry department. As per the documents, the property - Flat 6, London - was attached with Flagship Investment Limited, he said.
He said that he asked the land registry department for the provision of edition of historical copy of register of title pertaining to the year when this property had been acquired by Hassan. "When I received the document, I noticed that the edition date was January 28, 2015 and the company on whose name property had been acquired was Flagship Investment Limited," he said.
The court adjourned hearing of case till today (Wednesday) and Haris will continue cross-examination of the witness.