A Pakistani anti-graft court on Monday issued a bailable arrest warrant against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar after he failed to appear before it in a corruption case spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal.
The Accountability Court dismissed Dar’s application seeking exemption from personal appearance in the case hearing.
Dar’s counsel Khawaja Haris appeared in the court of judge Muhammad Bashir and sought Dar’s exemption from appearance as he was in London to seek medical treatment.
But the court rejected the plea and issued bailable arrest warrant and ordered him to appear in the next hearing on November 2.
The case was filed against Dar by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) following a verdict by the Supreme Court, which disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after an investigation into corruption allegations against his family.
Dar has so far appeared before the court seven times since the trial began. Earlier, he missed the first hearing on September 20. It is the second hearing that he missed.
The court had indicted Dar last month in the case for owning assets “beyond his known sources of income”.
At the last hearing on October 23, the court recorded statements of NABs witnesses, including Abdul Rehman Gondal of Allied Bank and Masoodul Ghani of Habib Bank Limited.
