Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza, were given a great relief in an accountability court in Lahore on Wednesday and sent the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) Ramzan Sugar Mills reference against them back to the anti-graft body.
PM Shehbaz Money Laundering:
The accountability court had last week ordered NAB to complete its investigation into the case within 90 days.
In its reference, NAB had alleged that Shehbaz was in possession of assets beyond his known sources of income and that Hamza was a beneficiary of the family’s offshore companies.
However, judge Sajid Awan said that this case could no longer be conducted in this court of Lahore because of the changes made in it the accountability law.
In response to this, PM Shehbaz Sharif and his son separately filed pleas for about Rs 16 billion in the money laundering case inflicted upon them.
Both father and son were called by the special court of Lahore to face the charges of this money laundering case on Wednesday. However, Shehbaz Sharif was not able to be present there.
PM Shahbaz sharif’s lawyer requested on his behalf to give him one day as he had to stay in Islamabad during the flood relief activities. Whereas, his son, Hamza Shehbaz appeared in this summation.
The judge however accepted PM’s absence request but also raised the question of that if he can’t be here for even ten minutes as this case was going on almost for a month and also not on a daily basis, therefore, his presence should not be a big problem. The judge added.
The Lahore Special Court has accepted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s request to excuse his appearance in the money laundering case inflicted upon both father and the son.
The court also accepted Hamza Shehbaz’s plea that he was not served the notice properly.
Moreover, PM Shehbaz Sharif and his son stated separately that, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had created the case for just revenge based on political grounds.
They both tried to convince the judge that their hands were free from any faulty activities for sure.
Both lawyers of Hamza Shehbaz and PM Shehbaz Sharif argued that their client’s company accounts had been frozen due to the court’s order but without any legal proof.
This was clearly a violation of their client’s rights as shareholders, as well as a violation of their client’s right to property. The lawyers argued that this was a case of misappropriation of funds and therefore should be treated as such.
They argued that this meant that their clients should be given access to their funds so that they could continue running their businesses and pay employees who depended on them for income.
As the trial is underway, the FIA has been directed to respond to the acquittal pleas by September 17. It was earlier this year that a key witness of the money laundering case popularly referred to as Maqsood Chaprasi.
But he could not be there for interrogation as he died of a heart attack before being caught and questioned.
Maqsood live abroad, he became a part of this money laundering case as a subsection came into view that a huge amount of money was being transferred through his personal accounts to the Sharifs.
However, the investigation team people also suspected several unknown accounts in the name of the Sharif family. The money laundering amount was estimated at about 16.3 billion which was through 2008-18
