In the fake bank accounts case, the Banking Court cleared PPP leader Faryal Talpur and 13 other accused, while the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) cleared them in its final report due to a lack of evidence.ed against former President Asif Ali Zardari, Faryal Talpur, and others for allegedly opening fake bank accounts and using them for billions of rupees in illegal transactions. In 2018, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), formed by the Supreme Court, declared at least 29 bank accounts as fake and claimed in its report that these accounts were used for money laundering amounting to 42 billion rupees. In January 2019, the Supreme Court sent the JIT report and the evidence gathered by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for further investigation.
Later, Karachi’s Banking Court received the cases for further proceedings. After hearing from the FIA’s investigative officer and the state prosecutor, Special Court Judge Javed Ahmad Kayar approved the final charge sheet, placing Faryal Talpur and 13 others in Column Two due to lack of evidence and ordering their release. The final investigation report named Asif Ali Zardari, Anwar Majeed, Zain Malik, Hussain Lawai, and others as accused.
However, during the last hearing, Zardari claimed presidential immunity under Article 248 of the Constitution and requested the court to halt criminal proceedings against him in the current case. The court order stated that, according to the investigative officer, accused Bilal Shaikh and Iqbal Aryan had passed away during the trial, leading to the closure of their cases. The court also mentioned that initially, Faryal Talpur’s name was included in the interim charge sheet as an accused, but her request led to a detailed review of her role in the case. She provided documents related to the sale of sugarcane crops grown on her agricultural land, claiming that a transaction of 30 million rupees with Omni Group Sugar Mills was a legitimate business deal.
The order said that this claim was supported by the NAB’s investigation report, which said that she had a claim under the Zardari Group Private Limited. The investigating officer also said that there was no bad evidence against Faryal Talpur. The court deemed the documents and evidence presented in support of her request credible. The court said that the final charge sheet was the result of thorough investigations that took place in a number of different places. The 14 people who were not charged were not charged because they were witnesses, were involved in separate investigations, or there wasn’t enough solid evidence.
