ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court is likely to take up today (Thursday) a petition of the Awami Muslim League’s (AML) Chairman Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed against the national anti-graft watchdog for failing to file an appeal before the apex court for reinvestigation into the Hudaibiya Papers Mills case. Sheikh Rasheed petitioned the apex court, pleading it to order the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to reinvestigate the corruption case against the Sharif brothers.
Talking to the media on Wednesday, the AML chief said the NAB had given an assurance before the court to reopen the graft case against the Sharif family, but it had so far failed to keep its word. He said that if it did not reopen the case, he would sue the NAB officials concerned. Earlier, he had submitted in the petition that the NAB chairman had assured the top court on July 21 to file an appeal within a week, and it made his statement as part of its order, but he failed to do so. Of late, he said, he sent a notice to the chairman to comply with court orders in this regard, but he failed to respond.
Quoting media reports, Sheikh Rasheed said the anti-graft body had decided not to file the appeal. A Joint Investigation Team constituted by the Supreme Court to investigate the Sharif family’s offshore properties held that Hudaibiya Papers Mills case warranted further investigation and accused ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar of whitening the money and taking it out of the country. Rasheed said the JIT produced corroborative evidence against the Sharif family with regard to money laundering, which they did not deny. Nevertheless, the NAB was dragging its feet to seek court’s permission to reopen the case, he added. He claimed that the NAB chairman and its prosecutor general were under influence of powerful elites, and requested the court to initiate contempt of court proceedings against them for disobeying the court orders. Musharraf launched a probe against Nawaz and Shehbaz in 2000 for their alleged involvement in money laundering. Ishaq Dar had given a confessional statement before a magistrate, alleging that the Sharif used the Hudaibiya Paper Mills as a cover for money laundering during the late 1990s.
Published in Daily Times, September 14th 2017.
