Islamabad, Dec. 21 (ANI): Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has not formally requested the Swiss government as yet to reopen the money-laundering cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.According to The Dawn, the NAB is awaiting government instructions on contacting the Swiss authorities in compliance with the Supreme Court order to reopen cases in the country and abroad.An official said the government had not requested the Swiss authorities to reinitiate the SGS and Cotecna cases moved against PPP leaders in 1998. Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Mohammad Hussain Azad said no court could convict a person twice in the same case or issue orders to any foreign court to reopen cases whose fate had been decided. Citing Article 13 of the Constitution and Section 403 of the Criminal Procedure Code, he said that if a court abroad pursued past cases, the appeal might be turned down on the plea of ‘no legality’.”The president has been under trial for over 12 years and no case has so far been proved against him,” Azad said.The late Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto, Zardari and their agent Jens Schlegelmilch were accused of receiving 60 million dollars in kickbacks from a Swiss company for awarding a pre-shipment inspection contract in 1994.The couple was convicted by the Lahore High Court, but the decision was set aside by the Supreme Court in 2001 because of partisanship of the LHC judge. In 2003, they were convicted of money laundering by an investigating judge in Geneva and handed down a suspended sentence of six-month imprisonment.

Bhutto appeared in the Geneva court and filed an appeal against the magistrate’s decision, only to face more serious money laundering charges. (ANI)