Islamabad: Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Saturday challenged former President Asif Ali Zardari’s acquittal in a case filed against him in 1998 accusing him of making and maintaining assets beyond his known sources of income.

The NAB in its appeal filed at the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench against the special accountability court’s August 26 verdict had stated that Mr Zardari was acquitted on the basis of technical flaws and key witnesses were ignored in the case proceedings.

The petition has demanded that the Rawalpindi accountability court’s judgment acquitting Mr Zardari in the assets reference be voided and the case be referred to a trial court.

The appeal said that NAB has a “tremendous amount of documentary evidence” relating to the properties and bank accounts of the accused.

Mr Zardari, who left office in 2013, faced corruption allegations involving Swiss banks dating back to the 1990s. He was accused along with his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, of laundering $ 12 million of illegal kickbacks.

The court, which has held hearings in Lahore and Rawalpindi since 1998, recorded statements from more than 40 witnesses. “It has now become abundantly clear that the allegations against my client were fake and there were no solid grounds for filing a baseless case against him 19 years ago,” lawyer Farooq H Naik said.

Mr Zardari has spent time behind bars on charges ranging from corruption to murder. Little-known at the time of his arranged marriage into the Bhutto dynasty in 1987, he carved out a powerful position for himself, serving as a government minister in his wife’s two administrations.