Till 2014, PM ostensibly owned an offshore company

JIT suspects myriad of undisclosed properties of Sharif family abroad; Hassan, Hussain contradict on Qatari funds

ISLAMABAD: In yet another revelation that may have far-reaching impact on his political career, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is alleged by the JIT to have been managing Capital FZE – a UAE based offshore company – which was not disclosed anywhere in the PM’s tax returns or documents submitted to election authorities.

“Interestingly, although respondent No 8 [Hassan Nawaz] stated that Capital FZE was created by him in anticipation of buying some properties in UAE which never materialised; was dissolved; and had no association with any family member.

“Yet on investigation, JIT was able to establish that not only the company remained functional till 2014 but it ostensibly was being managed under direct control of Mian Nawaz Shairf, respondent No 1 as chairman of the board,” the JIT writes in its report.



Besides the flats that came into limelight through Panama leaks, the JIT has given a list of properties that have been used by children of the prime minister to finance their companies. The list carries names of a total of 19 properties in different prime locations of London.

The JIT in its report mentioned various offshore companies owned or managed by the PM’s children.

The JIT said their list is based on limited information that was available with it. “Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that more properties in the UK have been or are held by respondent No 8 in his name or in name of his companies/ firms/sole proprietorship/ partnership firms or in the name of his family member or other benamidars,” the report asserted.

Respondent No 8 has failed to provide any documentary evidence – land registry, bank statements, tax returns – to justify the source used to own these properties, it added.

Digging further down into Hassan’s properties, the report says; “The list of known properties that were owned/ mortgaged by Flagship Investments Limited are stated in para 4 above. These are prime properties in UK.”



“The ownership documents/ land registry papers showing the time, date, amount, party, involvement of other parties from whom these properties were acquired/ bought have not been shared by respondent No 8,” it adds.

It says Flagship Investment Limited mainly relied upon loans from Hassan. The total injection of funds by Hassan into Flagship Investments Limited was GBP 3,282,007, with closing net position of loan that stood at GBP 1,972,279 in 2016.

The JIT observes that Flagship Investment Limited was incurring losses which aggregated to the tune of GBP 1,268,940. It says if a company does not make profit then it becomes highly unlikely to continue to run it. However, in the case of Flagship Investments, not only did it remain existent but also mortgaged at least 10 prime properties in the UK to avail loans from building societies and financial institutions.

The JIT asserts that the network of companies being established and dissolved over time appears to have been designated to camouflage the activities of respondent No 8 and his companies as well as to create smoke screen in the way of discovering unaccounted wealth.

The report claims that the JIT attempted to unearth the sources of fund and persons behind the underlying transactions but has been severely constrained due to the information that is being withheld from the JIT by the Sharif family.

It further suspects a scheme of revolving funds through inter-corporate financing and through financial institutions. “It appears that the multiple transactions with other associated companies of Flagship Investments Limited, which involves huge sums of money, was carried out to layer the flow of funds so that the real source/origin of funds and its utilisation could not be easily identified.”

The JIT also mentions various bank accounts of Hassan Nawaz and says even after these accounts were identified, he refused to provide any documents to justify the reported funds movement in the financial returns of his companies.

When the case was earlier taken up by Supreme Court, Sharifs had claimed that funds from investments made with the al-Thani family of Qatar provided a source for setting up Flagship Investments and other companies. However, in their statements before the JIT, that stance was neither qualified nor substantiated.

Hassan categorically confirmed before the JIT that he requested Hussain for funds for setting up these companies and that he did not know from where his brother obtained these funds.

On the contrary, when Hussain was confronted with the same question, he denied ever being approached by Hassan to provide the said funds.

Rather he said he has ‘learnt’ about provision of funds to Hassan for establishment of his companies through Nasir Khamis, representative of al-Thani family, during execution of settlement and it was never shared with him by Hassan or anyone else in the family.

“These dichotomies between the stance taken by the respondents in the honourbale Supreme Court and their respective statements/ narrations during their appearance before the JIT clearly indicates that the story of the utilisation of Qatari funds for establishment of the companies is, prima facie, false and concocted,” the report claims.