Zardari rejects JIT’s allegations leveled against him

ISLAMABAD: Former President Asif Ali Zardari has turned down the allegations levelled against him in the report prepared by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the fake bank accounts case and has asked the Supreme Court to reject the ‘dubious’ report, ARY News reported on Saturday.

In a 17-page document that he submitted in the Supreme Court on Saturday through his counsel, the co-chairman of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Zardari has said that he had not committed any wrongdoing, adding that the “allegations” in the JIT report were rooted in “victimisation against him”.

Expressing his reservations, the former president said that the JIT had neither provided copies of the evidence nor the copies of the witnesses’ statements to the respondents.

It is further stated in the response that the JIT doesn’t have the mandate to suggest that the matter should be referred to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), adding that alleging of wrongdoing without seeing evidentiary documents was a violation of article 10(A) of the constitution.

Zardari has asked to turn down the JIT report against him, as the report has already become controversial due to its leakage to the media, way before it was submitted to the court.

The JIT probing the fake accounts case requested the Supreme Court on Saturday to freeze all the assets held by Zardari Group, Omni Group, former president Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur.

These assets include residential houses such as Bilawal House in Karachi and Lahore as well as Zardari House in Islamabad.

The JIT submitted recommendations to freeze all the aforementioned properties as well as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) co-chair’s assets in New York and Dubai, all the urban and agricultural lands of Talpur and Zardari apart from Omni groups’ sugar mills, agricultural and energy companies and also luxury cars owned by them.