Press conference: ‘Sharifs’ businesses profited from deals with Turkey’

PPP leaders allege huge irregularities in several projects, rigging in by-elections.

LAHORE:

Senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)’s leaders, in a press conference on Monday, accused the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) leadership of corruption while awarding contracts to the Turkish government and companies.

They also alleged that they had used their contacts to expand their personal businesses.

Raja Riaz, the opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly, and Shaukat Mehmood Basra, the deputy opposition leader in the House, alleged that the PML-N leaders had obliged Turkey, by awarding Turkish companies various Punjab government contracts, by making ‘covert’ deals.

He said that the contract for the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) was given to a Turkish government “at a 40 per cent commission”. The last contract for the LWMC had been awarded for Rs2 billion, said the PPP leader, but it has now been given to a Turkish government for Rs10 billion.

He also criticised the Metro Bus Service project, saying that it had cost the people almost double the estimated cost. Rs70 billion has been spent till now on the project, claimed Riaz, and development projects across the Punjab had been stopped. He alleged that Shahbaz Sharif would use Rs20 billion of the project funds in his party’s election campaign.

Raja Riaz said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which has taken notice of the irregularities in the bus project, would expose their corruption.

Riaz described the Sharif brothers as “the masterminds of corruption” who, he said, had introduced corruption in the Punjab after Junejo’s tenure. The Sharifs, he said, were never involved in small scams but always huge cases of corruption.

He said that Sharifs were now trying to buy the judiciary by giving jobs to the sons of sitting and retired judges of the courts. He said that the Punjab government had obliged Justice (retired) Khalilur Rehman Ramday by paying his son, Mustafa Ramday, Rs3.2 million for acting as a legal advisor to the Lahore Development Authority. He alleged that Rs20 million was given to former Lahore High Court chief justice Khwaja Sharif’s son as well.

Riaz accused the judiciary of being biased, saying that when Faryal Talpur had campaigned during the by-elections, Sindh High Court judges had barred her from visiting the area but when Maryam Nawaz Sharif and Hamza Shahbaz campaigned across the Punjab, the judges had “closed their eyes”.

He demanded that Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry take suo moto action against the Sharifs.

Basra referred to the Sharif brothers as “Shar Brothers” in his speech, saying that that they had never liked democracy and had given “other forces” the opportunities to derail it.

Condemning them, he said the Sharifs’ had stolen the mandate of other political parties by using state machinery in the elections.

He said that records showed that Shahbaz Sharif’s closest friends had accompanied him on his several visits to Turkey. Basra alleged that Shahbaz had tried to get his friends contracts in Turkey.

He claimed he had evidence that Shahbaz had introduced his son, Salman Shahbaz, to Turkish representatives and asked them to award him contracts. Another beneficiary, Khawja Ahmad Ehsan, was a friend of Shahbaz, alleged Basra, who has now set up 70 per cent of his business in Turkey. He asked Shahbaz to resign from office.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2012.