ISLAMABAD - Accountability Court Islamabad has sought reply from Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on freezing of his assets on the next date of hearing.
Meanwhile, two more prosecution witnesses deposed before the court in assets-beyond-means reference against the finance minister here on Monday.
During the course of cross-examination of prosecution witness, the defence counsel Khawaja Haris advocate exchanged hot words with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecutor, and submitted before the court that he was recording his protest over the unbecoming behaviour of the NAB.
The NAB prosecutor moved an application seeking court’s ratification of NAB chairman’s decision to freeze the finance minister’s assets.
The court issued notice to defence counsel to come up with a reply on it, on the next date of hearing and adjourned the hearing till October 30th.
Earlier, the prosecution witness, Abdul Rehman Gondal, a banker by profession, recorded his statement.
The witness was later cross-examined by the defence counsel.
Gondal also submitted details of an account owned by Dar in a bank branch situated inside the Parliament House.
He informed the court that he first appeared before the NAB's investigation officer on August 17 this year.
During the cross-examination, hot words were traded between defence counsel Khawaja Haris and the NAB prosecutor Imran Shafiq, with the former accusing the latter of influencing the witness.
Following the cross-examination, the second witness, Masood Ghani, began recording his statement.
During his cross-examination, Khawaja Haris pointed out that the verified copies of bank documents presented by Ghani were different from the originals submitted to the NAB.
The court then asked the witness to appear in the next hearing with the original documents.
Judge Mohammd Bashir observed that the objective of recording statements of various bank officials was to gather bank data of the accused and compare it with his declared assets to ascertain the wrongdoing, if any. The court has summoned two additional witnesses, Faisal Shahzad and Mohammad Azeem, also from the banking sector, for the next hearing.
The hearing was subsequently adjourned till October 30th.
In all the court has recorded the statements of Ishtiaq Ali of Bank Alfalah, Shahid Aziz of National Investment Trust and Tariq Javed of Al Baraka Bank. The minister is accused of possessing assets beyond his declared sources of income in the reference filed against him by the NAB on the directions of the Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case judgment.