ISLAMABAD: A bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday extended the interim bail of former president Asif Ali Zardari in a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) case involving an apartment in an upscale New York neighbourhood purportedly owned by him.
The court earlier heard the pre-arrest bail request of Zardari and ordered an extension in the bail period.
The bench adjourned further hearing of the case until December 14 and ordered NAB to submit its written response in the next hearing.
Zardari first secured pre-arrest bail in the case in July. The watchdog had issued a notice, along with a questionnaire, to the former president on June 15, seeking details of the apartment in Belaire Condominiums — a high-rise condominium apartment building in Manhattan — located at 524 East 72nd Street.
In the petition submitted in July, he insisted that the notice is “baseless and the allegations made therein are based on malafide intentions so as to malign” him.
He has repeatedly denied owning the apartment. “I had sold out it the same year I purchased it,” the sources quoted him as saying.
In December 2018, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf filed an application before the Election Commission of Pakistan in Karachi seeking Zardari’s disqualification for “concealing” the apartment. In a complaint, a PTI MP from Karachi, Khurram Sher Zaman, alleged Zardari owned the apartment but had not declared it in his nomination for the 2018 general elections in which he returned to the National Assembly.
“Because of this act of his, Asif Ali Zardari under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Rules of the Election Commission of Pakistan, […] as per the past precedent, should be disqualified from holding public office under Article 62 (1)(f), as in my opinion, he ceases to be truthful and sagacious,” the application stated.
“This serious violation of the law needs to be examined by you since Zardari is a former president of Pakistan and co-chairs one of the major political parties of this country.”
Another document that surfaced at the time showed one Mehreen Shah was granted the power of attorney for the condo unit by the former president.
