Chaudhry Abdul Haq, the judge of Accountability Court-IV, on Wednesday issued notices to the Sharif family on an application filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) seeking reopening of the references against the family.
The judge ordered the accused to respond to the application filed by NAB Special Public Prosecutor Khurram Nawaz. He also directed the NAB authorities to submit records of the cases by July 28.
About the delay in reopening the cases, the NAB prosecutor told the court that the accused went out of the country in 2001 shortly after the references were filed against them the previous year.
The bureau had requested the trial court in 2008 to reopen the cases, but the court returned the application since it was not signed by the NAB chief.
The NAB prosecutor, however, could not satisfy the court on whether or not the Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court (LHC) had stayed the cases.
The Sharif brothers had petitioned the LHC on October 18 last year for the annulment of the references against them.
On May 17, the bureau had formally announced that inquiries against Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif would be reopened in accordance with President Asif Ali Zardari’s orders for scrutinizing all politicians.
The references against the Sharif family pertain to Hudaibia Paper Mills, Ittefaq Foundry and assets beyond means.
The accused in the Hudaibia case – Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Abbas Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, Hamza Shahbaz, Haroon Pasha and Senator Ishaq Dar – are accused of securing a huge loan in the mills’ name and using the amount for some other purpose.
In the Ittefaq case, Nawaz and Abbas Sharif along with Mukhtar Hassan, Kamal Qureshi and two others, are accused of abusing hefty loans.
In the third reference, the Sharif family is accused of accumulating assets beyond their declared means of income by allegedly misusing their authority.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 19th, 2012.
COMMENTS (6)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
@Safdar: Smat person, it is not possible to open all accounts on the demands otherwise iK must have done that, these demands are non realistic, baseless, no matter what you do they I'll keep demanding beyond and judgment. If you are reach enough banks will finance you you must know that, Afterall goodwill is worth more than cash in hand, ou know well these matters. Love you all.
strong text THANKS.
It is claimed by many PMLN leaders that the Sons of Nawaz Sharif started business with loans from the Banks. Earlier in many programs other PMLN leaders including Mr. Khawaja Asif have repeatedly said the properties in the UK were bought with 5% down payments and rest of 95% was financed by the Banks. We know that bank loans, especially the Mortgages in the UK are legally concluded matter, for which full documentations are prepared by the Solicitors for both parties. Banks also provide yearly statements of how much interest is charged and repayment is made during the year and how much loan is outstanding at the end of the financial year. Those documents should be easily available to PMLN. Why such evidence cannot be produced to support their statements by PMLN leaders? It should be moral and professional responsibilities of the Presenter and Producers of the program to ask from the participants relevant questions and to back up their comments with documentary proofs for financial transactions. But they failed to provide any such document. Unless PMLN produce evidence of those bank loans, their words cannot be taken as gospel truth.
Court summoned, oh no actually court invited Shairf family on tea.
The credit goes to IK to force the NAB and courts to stop sitting on cases against Sharifs. This forced the "independent judiciary" and NAB to show some fairness and treat all parties at par. Thanks for demanding this for sake of justice.
Cheap short to restart 90s politics again by Zerdary, is it not enough we already had. Swiss money is beyond means bring back and give back to Pakistanis their money.