ISLAMABAD: The Nawaz Sharif government is contemplating reviving through Swiss courts graft cases against former president Asif Ali Zardari for the return of $60m reportedly stashed away in Swiss banks.
Sources here say that the law ministry is engaged in discussions with a Geneva-based law firm, Python and Peter, and an Islamabad-based firm, Amhurst Brown, to revive cases against Zardari that Swiss authorities closed last year due to a time bar.
The sources said the government’s legal minds were confident that the Swiss cases could be reopened following a Rawalpindi accountability court’s revival of cases that had been kept pending against Zardari because he enjoyed presidential immunity for five years.
“The appeal could be filed in the Swiss court of appeal shortly,” said a government official.
Currently, the two private law firms are reviewing the judgments of the accountability courts in Rawalpindi acquitting the persons co-accused with Zardari inwhat are known as the SGS and Cotecna cases to firm up a future course of action,” he said.
However, Law Secretary Barrister Zafarullah Khan said: “Not in my knowledge,” in an SMS reply when asked if the government had decided to request the reopening of the SGS and Cotecna cases in Switzerland.
The minister for law and information, Senator Pervez Rashid, did not talk in clear terms about the issue for almost a week. When contacted on December 23, he said: “Your information might be right, but I am not fully updated. I will get back with the latest situation tomorrow.”
Approached two days later, he said: “We have decided on oath that we will not politicise any issue. We will go by the book and keep taking steps under the law. We will not try to persecute anybody or try to exonerate anybody. As you may have noticed, we have initiated the cases kept pending. In case there is a matter of national interest, we will take it to parliament for a decision.”
He did not go into the specifics.
Internews
