Co-Chairman of Pakistan People’s Party and Former President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari has been arrested by National Accountability Bureau (NAB), after his plea for bail was rejected by Islamabad High Court.
He got arrested from his residence and was then moved to NAB’s Rawalpindi office. A 15 member team included female personnel raided Zardari House despite the roads to the residence were blocked. The team faced strong retaliation by the party workers against the action, but eventually, the team took Zardari into custody.
The two-member bench, consisting of Justice Amir Farooq along with Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani heard the proceedings and granted the arrest warrants to the bureau. Zardari along with his sister Faryal Talpur is accused in multiple money laundering cases. However, no arrest warrants have been issued for Talpur, but she is likely to be arrested as well within a day or two.
Soon after the arrest, party workers started a strong protest against the verdict. Party representatives showed despair by protesting in Karachi, Lahore and many other cities in interior Sindh. Karachi Division of the party asked the workers to gather at the Press Club to shoe the political strength.
According to NAB, Zardari is listed in at least eight cases with other big fishes including Omni Group’s Anwer Majeed, his son Ghani Majeed, former chairperson of Pakistan Stock Exchange Hussain Lawai and Senior Vice President of Summit Bank Taha Raza.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed to investigate the money laundering case through fake accounts identified the involvement of over 11,500 bank accounts. The team marked 59 Suspected Transaction Reports (STR) and 24,500 Cash Transaction Reports. That implies the exchanges were hailed as suspicious. The case relates to suspicious exchanges worth Rs4.4 billion supposedly helped out through an invented ledger. As per the prosecution, the record titled M/s A One International was phony and it got a total of Rs4.4 billion out of which Rs30 million was paid to the Zardari Group at two distinct occasions.