Shahbaz to be produced before accountability court shortly
Shahbaz will be produce before accountability court today in Ashiana-e-Iqbal housing scheme case.
LAHORE (Dunya News) – Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif will be produced before the accountability court today (Monday), a day ahead of the expiry of his physical remand in Ashiana-e-Iqbal housing scheme case.
The remand was set to expire on October 30 but the anti-graft watchdog decided to produce Shahbaz Sharif before the accountability court one day before the expiry of his physical remand owing to a local holiday in Lahore in connection with annual urs of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh (RA).
NAB said it needed more time to interrogate the former Punjab chief minister as part of its investigation into the Ashiana-e-Iqbal housing scheme and would, therefore, request the court to extend the 14-day physical remand.
The anti-graft watchdog on Saturday approved an inquiry against the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president in a case pertaining to assets beyond income.
Earlier, an accountability court in Lahore had extended Shahbaz‘s physical remand to NAB for 14 days after his previous 10-day remand ended on October 16.
During the proceedings, Shahbaz maintained he himself ordered investigation into corruption allegations in the housing scheme and denied awarding contracts to a favorite firm.
He was arrested on October 5 after appearing before the NAB team in Saaf Paani Company scheme. NAB said Shahbaz failed to satisfy the investigation team regarding a tender awarded to a private consultancy firm and was therefore arrested.
The anti-graft watchdog said the firm did not conduct any kind of survey but nevertheless was provided a lucrative sum of 1.5 billion rupees. It added that Fawad Hassan Fawad, the principal secretary of former premier Nawaz Sharif, had become an approver in the case.
Fawad, in his statement, had claimed that he had awarded a contract to a “favourite firm” in the Rs14 billion Ashiana Housing project at the behest of Shahbaz Sharif.
The anti-graft agency said that the contract for the housing scheme was won by a construction company titled Chaudhry Latif and Sons but Sharif cancelled it and later on awarded the contract to Lahore Casa Developers - a proxy group of Paragon City (Pvt) Limited, which is said to be owned by former Railways minister Saad Rafique.
