ISLAMABAD – For the first time in the judicial history of the country, twoof the serving judges of Islamabad High Court have been served with noticesby the Supreme Court of Pakistan for receiving a hefty fee from Employees’Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI).
Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani – who were part ofthe bench that disqualified former Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif – havebeen asked to explain why as private counsel they had charged aprofessional fee from the EOBI when the same had not been approved byfederal law department, the law ministry.
The notices were issued by a two-judge SC bench comprising Chief JusticeMian Saqib Nisar and Justice Ijaz-ul-Ahsan and many other lawyers have alsobeen asked the same conundrum.
According to the rules, the federal departments cannot hire any privatecounsel without the approval of the law ministry provided the fee beingcharged exceeds Rs100,000.
The top court wondered how the department had engaged these counsel withoutthe approval when the money spent was taken from the national exchequer,asking the judges in question to appear before the bench and explain theirposition.
During the last hearing on Friday, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) SohailMahmood informed the bench that Rs50 million had been spent by the EOBI onlawyers’ fee of whom two had been elevated as judges of the Islamabad HighCourt.
The list of fees suggests that Justice Minallah as lawyer got Rs850,000 (Rs0.85 million) in 2012, whereas A.Q Law Associate, where Justice Kayani wasworking as an associate, received Rs658,000 (Rs 0.658 million) by the EOBI,the same year.
The court was also informed that the EOBI had roped in different privatecounsels in 87 cases in violation of rules.
Regarding the lawyers, the EOBI engaged Advocate Babar Sattar in 34 casesfor millions of rupees without getting approval from the law ministry.
Moreover, Fakhar Zaman Tarar, Ahmed Shehzad Farooq, Sarfraz Ali Metlo, SyedAhmed Ali Shah and Gohar Ali Khan also appeared in several cases and gotthe handsome amount.
DAG Mahmood told the court that EOBI had also hired senior counsel KhawajaHaris and Rasheed A. Rizvi, but hastened to add that they were engagedafter the approval of the law ministry.
Moreover, the EOBI engaged Aitzaz Ahsan in one case and paid him Rs 2.5million with the go-ahead of the law ministry, but in the second case wherehe received Rs 0.7 million, the department did not get approval.
In a Feb 8, 2017 judgement, Justice Qazi Faez Isa had also highlighted thatprivate counsels were being hired for huge fees despite the presence of afull-fledged attorney general office and the provincial advocate general’soffices.
Justice Isa had remarked that if the governments did not follow the orderbefore engaging a private advocate, then any statement made before a courtwould not be binding on the government concerned.
Subsequently, the federal government amended rules of business by allowingits departments to engage private lawyers after consulting the AttorneyGeneral of Pakistan.