Restoration of graft cases against the Sharifs

RAWALPINDI: Special judge of the Accountability Court-II Wamiq Javed is expected to announce his judgment on Monday whether or not to restore three references against PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and his family.

The National Accountability Bureau has contended before the court that the corruption references against the Sharif family should be reinstated. The court had reserved its judgment earlier. NAB counsel through the application had prayed the court for revival of pending references, including default on payment of loan by the Ittefaq Foundries, default on payment of tax by the Hudabia Paper Mills and Raiwind assets. In an earlier hearing, NAB Deputy Prosecutor General Sultan Mansoor while giving arguments in the court said that if no final decision came, then the court could review it.

He argued that the decision to keep references pending against the Sharif brothers was not judicial but it was of administrative nature. It was responsibility of the court for some other purpose, thereby causing loss to the national exchequer. When Sharif and members of his family went to Saudi Arabia on April 12, 2001, under a deal with the government of Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf, the NAB moved for getting the cases deferred for an indefinite period. In the Ittifaq Foundries Reference, Nawaz Sharif, Abbas Sharif, Mukhtar Hassan, Kamal Qureshi and a couple of other people were accused of securing and misusing loans, causing a loss of millions of rupees to the exchequer.

The accused in the Raiwind assets reference are Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, their father late Mian Sharif, mother Shamim Akhtar and some other members of the family. According to the available record, the accused in the Hudabia Paper Mills case are Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif, Abbas Sharif, Hussain Nawaz, Hamza Shahbaz, Haroon Pasha and Senator Ishaq Dar. They were accused of securing huge amounts of money as loan in the name of Hudabia Paper Mills and later using the loan. In the application filed on Feb 17, NAB said the accused were now in the country and could be proceeded against. APP