Hussain Nawaz offered me 'Rs500m bribe' to resign after Al-Azizia verdict: judge Arshad Malik.

ISLAMABAD -- Accountability judge Arshad Malik has claimed that he was offered a Rs500 million cash bribe by the son of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, who demanded that the judge resign on the grounds that he "could no longer deal with the guilt of having convicted" Nawaz under duress in the Al-Azizia/Hill Metal Establishment reference.

In an affidavit submitted to the Islamabad High Court chief justice, the judge claimed that he was offered bribes and threatened with dire consequences by PML-N representatives initially to force him into issuing verdicts in favour of Nawaz in the Al-Azizia and Flagship Investments references, and later to coerce him into resigning from his office. He said he refused to accept the bribes and give in to the alleged threats.

The judge claimed that in early 2018, an acquaintance named Nasir Janjua, who was associated with the PML-N, "implored" him to issue verdicts of acquittal in the Al-Azizia and Flagship references, saying that it was on his personal recommendation to Nawaz Sharif that he (Malik) was appointed as judge in the accountability court.

During the arguments stage of the references' trial, the judge said he was again approached by Janjua with a "financial offer" from Nawaz of Rs100 million but that he refused the offer.

The offer was shortly followed by a "thinly veiled threat of physical harm and intimidation" by Nasir Butt, the PML-N 'sympathiser' who recorded the video shared by Maryam Nawaz that started the controversy, the judge claimed.

"The threat was delivered by Nasir Butt saying to me in an intimidating tone that he owed Mian Nawaz Sharif a lot, as he (Nawaz) had helped him avoid punishment for 4-5 murders committed by him (Butt) by using his immense political influence and, therefore, he (Butt) was willing to go to any extent to help [Nawaz] in the trials he was facing," judge Malik claimed.

He said once he convicted Nawaz in the Al-Azizia reference and acquitted him in the Flagship reference, Butt and Janjua allegedly started blackmailing him using a "secretly recorded manipulated immoral video [showing him] in a compromising position" that was shot while the judge was serving in Multan.

Using "the Multan...