Reopening of Hudabiya case recommended

JIT investigations traced sustentative portion of aggregate funds identified in FIA FIRs, mentioned in NAB references

ISLAMABAD: In yet another damaging conclusion, the JIT has recommended to the Supreme Court to reopen the Hudabiya Paper Mills reference and other cases pending with the FIA and NAB against the Sharif family.

“The JIT has brought on record substantial additional evidence and corroborates the FIA and NAB investigations and also establishes links between the two investigations. It is recommended that all the three cases are fit to be reopened for investigation and trial on the basis of new additional evidence procured and brought on record by the JIT,” the six-member probe panel wrote while recommending to the apex court to file a reference against the accused.

The JIT claimed that from 1991 to 1998, the Sharif family had opened various ‘fictitious and fraudulent’ foreign currency accounts and obtained loans for Hudabiya Papers, Hudabiya Engineering, Chaudhry Sugar and Hamza Board Mills.



Besides the already available material from the records of the FIA and the NAB – including statements of witnesses – the JIT came up with some additional evidence which was not part of earlier investigations.

It revealed that an account of Mukhtar Hussain, an employee of the Ittefaq Group/Sharif family companies, and three accounts of Seed Ahmed, a confidante of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, had been identified. The JIT established links of these accounts with the already identified ‘fictitious’ and ‘fraudulent’ accounts.

The JIT report further claimed that ‘money laundering’ actually started in September 1991 as against the first identified transaction in August 1992 under FIA and NAB investigations. These transactions showed that funds to the tune of $2.24 million were deposited into the accounts of Saeed and Mukhtar. Subsequently, these funds were transferred to the accounts of Musa Ghani and Masud Qazi – two persons already identified in the previous investigations and mentioned in Dar’s affidavit.

According to the report, these funds were transferred as Dollar Bearer Certificates (DBCs) in order to hide the source of funds. Of the total outflow outside the country at that time, an amount of $3.907 million was sent to the United Kingdom. This amount included $350,000 to Shamrock Consulting Corporation in London as identified in FIA’s challans of that time.

The JIT also claimed to have discovered an additional $3.55 million remitted to different companies and individuals in London during 1993-1995.



The JIT investigations traced sustentative portion of the aggregate funds identified in FIA FIRs and mentioned in NAB references in the Hudabiya Paper Mills cases.

To make it a compelling case against the Sharif family, in addition to new evidences brought on record, a comprehensive start-to-end trail of funds encapsulating the evidences covered by FIA and NAB investigations for the entire period from 1991 to 2000 have been attached by the JIT.

The JIT also evaluated Dar’s statement, which he later denied and claimed to have been taken under coercion. The JIT said that the statement is corroborated by documented banking records.

The JIT recommended that besides the accused persons already mentioned in the NAB reference, the name of Saeed Ahmed should also be added to the list of the accused. It also recommended adding the name of Javed Kayani to the list.

Kiyani, an account holder of Habib Bank in Zurich, is accused of assisting in opening fictitious foreign currency accounts, remitting funds into these accounts and utilising them as collateral for loans to some of the group of companies of the Sharif family

The JIT said scrutiny of record shows that the Lahore High Court – in a decision on quashing references back in 2011 – only discussed the FIA jurisdiction regarding conducting investigations into matters of foreign currency accounts of private individuals. However, the question of existence of individuals in whose name fake accounts were opened was not touched.

The cases were quashed without conducting a proper trial of the chain of events which are part of a bigger offence – Sharif family’s connection with accumulation of assets and money laundering, it said.

The JIT recommended initiating another case which the NAB had refrained from doing despite availability of record. The case pertained to a “Trust” established in the US. After setting up this Trust, companies associated with the Shairf family had entered into an agreement with it for provision of security to banks in Pakistan to obtain loans.