Shehbaz, Hamza acquittal

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son, former Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz, have been acquitted in the Rs16 billion money laundering case filed in November 2020.

The decision came after FIA told the court that no direct transactions from ‘benami’ accounts could be tied to Shehbaz or his sons. The PM’s other son, Suleman Shehbaz, had been declared a proclaimed offender.

The FIA probe, ordered by the previous PTI government, looked into 28 benami accounts allegedly linked to Shehbaz, his family, and some of their employees. About 17,000 suspicious transactions involving the accounts of low-paid employees took place between 2008 and 2018, including some involving ‘hundi’ transfers abroad, according to the initial investigation.

Shehbaz, Hamza, and other PML-N leaders celebrated the verdict while slamming the “fabricated”, “false”, “baseless”, and “political revenge case”. PTI leaders, on the other hand, decried the verdict, calling it a “slap on the nation’s face” and tried to tie the verdict to their rubbished theory of an American conspiracy to sack the PTI government.

Interestingly, just a few days after wriggling out of a longrunning contempt of court charge, Imran Khan again appeared to be pointing fingers at the “weak” judiciary while accusing the PML-N of meddling in the investigation.

However, Shehbaz and Hamza’s lawyer had reiterated earlier that apart from lacking evidence, none of the prosecution’s witnesses could tie his clients to the charges either. In one instance, an FIA official actually made a damning claim that a family business employee’s suspicious accounts had been operating even after the man died, yet he failed to offer any evidence of this when asked for it by the judge.

Exchanges such as this are a reminder of why most corruption accusations collapse under even the slightest scrutiny. Yet, due to legal loopholes and tax policies that benefit shady politicians in all parties, nobody really investigates more straightforward claims, such as disproportionate growth of wealth while in power, lest their own assets be investigated when power changes hands.