MULTAN: Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday said he would not comply with unconstitutional procedures and dared the authorities to carry out his arrest wherever they wanted to, DawnNews reported.
Addressing a press conference in Multan, Gilani said if former military ruler General (retd) Pervez Musharraf would have been jailed for even at least a month, then he would have accepted that the country’s judiciary operated as an independent institution.
He was speaking in context of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) which has sought assistance from the Multan police to send a second notice to the former prime minister for recording his statement in the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam.
In the NICL scam, Gilani has been accused of illegally appointing Ayaz Khan Niazi as the company’s chairman in Feb 2009.
He has also been accused of issuing orders in 2011 for the transfer of former director general of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Zafar Ahmed Qureshi, who was investigating the scam.
Speaking to reporters today, the former premier said NAB chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry was himself a wanted man and questioned how the latter could summon him.
Gilani moreover said that although he had been ousted from the office of prime minister despite being elected in a democratic manner, thousands who had directly benefited from the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) remained scot-free.
Gilani alleged that NAB had been questioning him with regard to Moonis Elahi’s role in the NICL scam. The former premier said Moonis, son of former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, had been acquitted in the case but the NAB was trying to drag him.