Have accounted for every penny amassed in UK: Shehbaz

Says accumulated assets because he ‘couldn’t live under the patronage of the Queen’

LAHORE:

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif has said that he amassed assets in the United Kingdom because he “could not live there under the patronage of Queen" and asserted he has accounted for every penny he accumulated in the country.

The opposition leader appeared before the accountability court in Lahore in connection with a money laundering case.

During the hearing, Shehbaz claimed that all institutions “ganged up” to mine for evidence against him “but could not find anything” even as the case dragged on for almost two years. The government even went on to freeze my accounts and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) kept me in detention, he recalled.

Read: Shehbaz’s trial should be shown live: Fawad

“Now the truth has emerged as clear as crystal,” he claimed.Shehbaz said that he was accused of corruption in a grant when he had actually “saved the poor man’s Rs1,000 billion”, and initiated development projects for them at the lowest of tenders.

He said that he himself made it a point to negotiate with companies to minimise the bidding. “If there was no sense of public money, I would have given the same project for millions,” he said. “Even if I go to the grave, facts will not change.”

He said that when he tried to return to Pakistan from the UK in 2004, an investigation was launched against him and his son Suleman Shehbaz there.