Ishaq Dar returns to Pakistan after five years in self-exile

ISLAMABAD: Former finance minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz senior leader Ishaq Dar on Monday returned to Pakistan after ending five years of self-imposed exile, ARY News reported.

The former finance minister Dar, who escaped in the then prime minister’s plane to London, has returned homeland in PM Shehbaz Sharif’s aircraft.

Talking to reporters at the Nur Khan Airbase in Chaklala, Dar said that PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif and the premier had handed over the responsibility of the finance ministry to him.

“I will try my best to fulfill all the responsibilities. We will try to take out the country from the economic maelstrom it is stuck in […] the way we did in 1998 and 2013.”

Ishaq Dar will take oath as Senator tomorrow (Tuesday), said sources, adding that the PML-N leader will also assume charge of finance minister tomorrow after Miftah Ismail resigned on the instructions of the party leadership.

In a meeting with Mian Nawaz Sharif and PM Shehbaz Sharif today, I have verbally resigned as Finance Minister. I will tender a formal resignation upon reaching Pakistan. It’s been an honour to serve twice as Finance Minister. Pakistan Paindabad

— Miftah Ismail (@MiftahIsmail) September 25, 2022

A statement released after the meeting confirmed that Nawaz Sharif and PM Shehbaz had nominated Mr Dar as the finance minister.

Ishaq Dar, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, Malik Mohammad Ahmed Khan and Ahad Cheema were also present at the meeting which took place in the PM’s apartment on Edgware Road.

Dar’s arrest warrants suspended

On Sept. 23, an accountability court suspended former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s chronic arrest warrants until October 7, saying the court would scrap the arrest warrants when the accused presents himself before the court.

Accountability court judge Muhammad Bashir heard Ishaq Dar’s plea to cancel the arrest warrants against him. The court suspended his arrest warrants on his lawyer Qazi Misbah’s guarantee that Dar would come straight to the court after landing at the airport.

On September 21, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader challenged his arrest warrants released by the NAB court. Dar, through his lawyer Qazi Misbah, filed a plea in the court of AC judge Azam Khan against his arrest warrants in a graft case.

NAB cases against Dar

Earlier in 2017, an accountability court declared former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar a proclaimed offender in a corruption reference filed against him by National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

NAB reference states that the accused had acquired assets and pecuniary interests/resources in his name or the name of his dependents for an approximate amount of Rs831.678 million.

The assets are disproportionate to his known sources of income for which he could not reasonably account.