Panama case: SC to hear review petitions of Nawaz, children on Sept 12

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan has fixed the date for hearing the review petitions filed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his children against the Panama case verdict.

A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Aijaz Afzal, will hear the petitions on September 12.

The other two members of the bench include Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed and Justice Aijazul Ahsan.

Three different review petitions were filed by Nawaz Sharif and one by his daughter, Maryam Nawaz.

On July 28, Nawaz Sharif stepped down as the prime minister of Pakistan after being disqualified from holding public office by the Supreme Court in a landmark decision on the Panama Papers case.

Announcing its verdict, the five-member bench unanimously disqualified Nawaz Sharif for failing to disclose his un-withdrawn receivables constituting assets from UAE-based Capital FZE in his nomination papers for the 2013 general election, stating that this meant he was not ‘honest’ and ‘truthful’, as per the Constitution.

Sharif, in his review petitions filed on August 15, pleaded the apex court to dismiss the petitions filed by Sheikh Rasheed, Imran Khan and Siraj-ul-Haq, which sought his disqualification.

The petitions added that the five-member bench did not have jurisdiction to rule over case 184-3 to disqualify the prime minister “without fair trial” and added that the apex court overseeing the NAB probe is violation “against the trichotomy Article 175”.

The former prime minister, through his petitions, argued that the decision passed by the court on July 28 should have been passed by a three-member bench as Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Gulzar Ahmed's jurisdiction had expired after their dissenting judgement on April 20.

Earlier on Friday, the NAB submitted four interim references against the Sharif family and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar before an accountability court in Islamabad.

Under tight security, cartons full of documents from the NAB regional offices were ushered into the Islamabad Accountability Court amid much media hype as the Supreme Court's deadline was to expire on September 8.

Nawazish Ali, a spokesperson for NAB, told Geo News that all the references have been accepted for trial and nothing was sent back.

The references were filed in light of the Supreme Court's July 28 decision in the Panama Papers case.

NAB was given six weeks, from the date of the court's order, to file the reference in an accountability court while the court was granted six months to wrap up the proceedings.