Islamabad: Pakistan’s anti-corruption body has issued summons to disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his two sons to appear before it on Friday in money laundering and graft cases.
A National Accountability Bureau (NAB) official told the Dawn newspaper that Sharif and his sons — Hussain and Hassan Nawaz — had been told to appear before investigators in Lahore for questioning in the Al Azizia Steel Mills case.
They will also be probed in connection with their offshore properties revealed by the Panama Papers.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday granted the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) access to Volume X of the final report of the joint investigation team (JIT) that probed allegations of money laundering against the Sharif family in the Panamagate case, Dawn online reported.
The contents of the previously withheld volume have been made available to the bureau a day before former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his two sons have been summoned to appear before NAB investigators in Lahore.
NAB was asked to file four references in the Rawalpindi accountability court on the basis of the material collected and referred to by the JIT against members of the Sharif family and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in keeping with the apex court’s verdict in the Panamagate case.
Volume X of the report contains details of mutual legal assistance (MLA) requests sent to various countries and has not been made public by the Supreme Court on the request of the six-member JIT’s chairman Wajid Zia, who had feared that the information would be used to interfere in investigative collaborations with foreign countries.
Earlier, the SC had only provided NAB with the first nine volumes of the report, withholding the tenth.
On July 28, a five-member bench of the Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from office following the JIT probe that exposed illegal family wealth stashed abroad.
The apex court had directed the anti-corruption body to file four reference cases by September 8 against Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz, his two sons, son-in-law Muhammad Safdar and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, the Dawn said on Thursday.
These relate to the Sharif family’s four upscale flats in London and 16 offshore companies held by the family.
Sharif filed a review petition before the Supreme Court on Tuesday against his disqualification and moved a separate application with a request to suspend the final verdict in the Panama Papers case as long as the review petition was pending.
In the application, Sharif said that under Article 188 of the Constitution, he cannot be disqualified without a trial.
