Daily Mail unearths Shehbaz Sharif's 'embezzlement' in earthquake victims' aid
According to a confidential investigation report, millions of pounds were laundered from the aid.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Britain-based publication Daily Mail has exposed an alleged money laundering scandal of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president and the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly (NA) Shehbaz Sharif from the UK government aid for earthquake victims in Pakistan.
According to a confidential investigation report seen by Daily Mail, millions of pounds were transferred into the bank accounts of Shehbaz’s family members, including his wife, children and a son-in-law.
It states to have interviewed key witnesses held on remand in jail, including a UK citizen Aftab Mehmood.
Mehmood claims that he had laundered millions on behalf of Shahbaz’s family from a nondescript office in Birmingham – without attracting suspicion from Britain’s financial regulators, who inspected his books regularly.
According to Daily Mail, investigators are convinced that some of the allegedly stolen money came from Department for International Development (DFID)-funded aid projects.
For rehabilitating and rebuild lives of the poor, the DFID gave £54 million from UK taxpayers; and the legal documents allege that Shahbaz’s son-in-law received about £1 million from that fund.
Moreover, investigators have launched inquiries into alleged thefts from DFID-funded schemes to give poor women cash to lift them out of poverty and to provide healthcare for rural families, according to the publication.
Allegedly, stolen millions were laundered in Birmingham and then allegedly transferred to Shahbaz’s family’s accounts by UK branches of banks including Barclays and HSBC;
Furthermore, it says that self-confessed Birmingham money-launderer Aftab Mehmood told the MoS that he had his accounts audited every three months by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – who failed to notice anything was amiss;
As per claim by the Daily Mail, Britain’s National Crime Agency has been working closely with Pakistani investigators and Home Secretary Sajid Javid is discussing the possible extradition of members of Shahbaz’s family who have taken refuge in London;
Aware of how widespread corruption is in Pakistan, DFID has been running a £1.75 million project designed to ‘reduce the exposure to fraud and corruption’ of UK aid. But although it says it is already vigilant, DFID admits that, to date, it has referred just one individual to the Pakistani authorities for trying to steal UK funds.
Contrarily, according to the report, Shahbaz’s son Suleman denied the allegations against him and his family, saying they were the product of a ‘political witch-hunt’ ordered by Pakistan’s new prime minister, the former cricketer Imran Khan. ‘No allegation has been proven. There is no evidence of kickbacks,’ he said.
Prime Minister Imran Khan formed a special team – the Asset Recovery Unit – headed by a UK-educated barrister, and it has examined a series of suspicious transactions running to many millions and shown that Shahbaz’s family’s assets grew enormously during the years he was in power.
A confidential investigation report, seen by Daily Mail, says the family was worth just £150,000 in 2003 but by 2018 their total assets had grown to about £200 million. Among other properties, Shahbaz owns a 53,000 sq ft palace in Lahore, which has its own large security force.
The money, the report says, was channelled from abroad – via several elaborate money-laundering schemes, in which Britain played a central role.
The report claims laundered payments were made to Shahbaz’s children, his wife and his son-in-law Ali Imran. But it adds that Shahbaz ‘was the principal beneficiary of this money-laundering enterprise, by way of spending, acquisition of properties and their expansion into palatial houses where he lived.’
One of the most audacious schemes was said to be focused on Birmingham. The report lists 202 ‘personal remittances’ from the UK and the United Arab Emirates into the bank accounts of Shahbaz’s wife, two sons and two daughters.
Pakistan’s Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA), set up after the devastating quake of 2005, received £54 million from DFID between then and 2012, both for immediate relief and long-term schemes to rebuild victims’ lives.
Ikram Naveed, the former finance director of ERRA, pleaded guilty and confessed last November to embezzling about £1.5 million from ERRA during the period DFID was funding it, of which he passed on almost £1 million to Ali Imran, Shahbaz’s son-in-law who is married to his daughter Rabia.
“Investigators have launched inquiries into alleged thefts from DFID-funded schemes to give poor women cash to lift them out of poverty and to provide healthcare for rural families,” the report said.
Last year, Daily Mail disclosed the case against Pakistan’s former prime minister, Shahbaz’s brother Nawaz Sharif, who had built up a London property empire worth £32 million.
