Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar on Thursday rejected ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s appeal seeking to merge three references filed by the National Accountability Bureau against him, The Express Tribune reported.
On October 13, Sharif had approached the Supreme Court to club the three cases into a single allegation, claiming that holding various trials on a single allegation violates the defendant’s fundamental rights, ARY News reported. However, the apex court’s registrar had rejected this plea.
Sharif then challenged the registrar’s decision, which was heard on Thursday by Nisar. The chief justice upheld the order passed by the registrar office, adding that the option to review verdict in the Panama Papers case was already provided to Sharif’s family.
Sharif, his two sons, his daughter and son-in-law face corruption charges after the former prime minister was named in the Panama Papers leak in 2016. Leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed that three of his children owned offshore companies and undisclosed assets.
On July 28, a five-judge bench of the court had disqualified Sharif as an MP, after which he had to step down as the prime minister. The court had also ordered corruption charges to be filed against Sharif’s children Hussain, Hassan and Maryam Nawaz, son-in-law Mohammad Safdar, and Ishaq Dar, the finance minister.
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