LAHORE: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Accountability and Interior Mirza Shahzad Akbar has claimed that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior leader Khawaja Asif, who is in the custody of National Accountability Bureau (NAB), is possessing assets beyond known sources of income and failed to provide any documentary proof of how his assets significantly multiplied while holding public office.
While explaining how people, particularly lawmakers, launder money through Iqama (residence permit), the premier's aide said that Khawaja Asif was holding Iqama when he was serving the country as foreign minister, minister for water and power and minister for defense.
"During the same period, Khawaja Asif was getting a salary of 50,000 dirham (Rs 140 million) from a Dubai-based company for which he had to work for at least eight hours a day and there were only two weekly off says and 20 holidays in a year as per the agreement the PML-N senior leaders presented before the NAB," Shahzad said while addressing a press conference in Lahore on Monday.
He said despite the laps of two years, the PML-N leader could not provide any documentary proof of assets, especially Rs 140 million salary simply because the company in question never transacted a single penny into his account.
"If this is not corruption and money laundering, then what this is?" he asked and asserted that the Iqama is not the only issue, but there are a "lot of things" the NAB is investigating against Asif who is among one of close aides to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
When asked under which deal the government allowed former PM Nawaz to go abroad, the SAPM dispelled the notion that the government had signed any deal with the PML-N, saying that keeping in view "deteriorating" health condition of Nawaz, the federal government had decided to let Nawaz go abroad for his medical treatment under a condition that he would have to pay fines in cases which he had been convicted or accused by the NAB.
However, the Lahore High Court (LHC) allowed Nawaz to go abroad on the personal undertaking of Shahbaz Sharif through a judicial order, Akbar said, adding that now both Nawaz and Shahbaz are under the violation of court order and the Islamabad High Court had also declared them proclaim offenders (POs).
When asked whether the PTI regime had any intention to work with Broadsheet, a private assets-recovery firm in the UK, Shahzad said the PTI government is in contact with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the British Home Department because government-to-government information sharing are more authentic and saves taxpayers money.
About the deportation of former PML-N federal minister Ishaq Dar, the SAPM said a memorandum of understanding (MoU) had been signed with the British government in this regard. He said Dar is trying to seek asylum these days. "The case of Nawaz Sharif is totally different from Ishaq Dar and other people because he is a convicted person and the PTI government is trying its level best to bring him back," he said in response to another query.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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