Ishaq Dar to return home by July-end

LONDON: Former finance minister Ishaq Dar has decided to return to Pakistan in the third week of July as he has received his new Pakistani passport.

Credible sources have shared that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo Nawaz Sharif has given a go-ahead to Dar to return to Pakistan. Dar would return to Pakistan in the third week of July and arrangements had been made for his travel.

The sources said Dar had hired a legal team and would take next steps in consultation with them. Dar, said the sources, would face the cases registered against him and assume his responsibilities as a senator soon after arriving in Pakistan. The source said: Cases against Ishaq Dar are fake and politically-motivated. Everyone knows the background of these vindictive cases and Dar was targeted to bring down the then PML-N government.”

The sources said there was a case against Dar in which he was accused of not submitting details of his assets for 22 years. Dar had maintained that he had already submitted a 32-year record of his assets that was not considered as the objective was not justice but revenge and political engineering at that time.

The sources shared that Dar had received his Pakistani passport after it was restored by the interior ministry of Pakistan, soon after the PML-N came to power, following the ouster of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. Dar had become stateless in London in September 2018 after the Pakistani government cancelled his and his wife’s diplomatic passports.

The cancellation of his passport meant that he was in London without travel documents and unable to travel to Pakistan to comply with the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s deadline for him to make an appearance before it.

Dar had said he was unable to travel to Pakistan because he was undergoing medical treatment in London and sent the ministry concerned notarized letters from his doctor, duly attested by the Foreign Ministry of UK, confirming that his medical treatment was continuing. The sources said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had asked Dar to return to Pakistan to become part of his team and advise him on the economic affairs of the country.