NAB pushes back date to produce Shehbaz Sharif in accountability court
The remand was set to expire on Oct 30 but NAB decided to push back the date owing to urs holiday.
LAHORE (Dunya News) – Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif will be produced before the accountability court on Monday, ahead of the expiry of his physical remand.
The remand was set to expire on October 30 but the anti-graft watchdog decided to push back the date owing to a public holiday in connection with annual urs of Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh.
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 Shehbaz‘s physical remand to NAB for 14 days after his previous 10-day remand ended on October 16.
During the proceedings, Shehbaz 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 Shehbaz 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 Shehbaz 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.
