The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday declared the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) reference against former president Asif Ali Zardari ‘ultra vires and not according to the law’, reports The News.
IHC Chief Justice (CJ) Athar Minallah condemned NAB authorities and said that all its references got busted for not being prepared as per law. He said that the Bureau was just wasting its time by making pointless references, adding that NAB was not above the law.
“How the bureau could declare null and void the Income Tax Order by itself,” the CJ observed, adding that NAB did not have any jurisdiction to nullify the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Assessment Order.
Earlier, IHC had noticed that NAB challenged the acquittal request of Zardari, without obtaining the original record of the case.
The court noted that it took NAB seven years to realise that the appeals were filed without possessing the original record.
CJ Minallah said NAB should now admit it had made a mistake by filing these references since it did not have proof against the former president.
“And if indeed, there were no proofs, then the court will also take action against the former bureau chairman in whose tenure these cases had been filed,” said the IHC CJ.
