National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Saturday filed a supplementary reference against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president and Leader of the Opposition Shahbaz Sharif, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's principal secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad and other eleven people in the Ashiana-e-Iqbal housing scam.
Land and Development Authority (LDA) director general Ahad Cheema was also booked in the 1000-page three-volume reference in which Nadeem Zia, Shahid Shafiq, Bilal Qadwai, Muneer Zia, Khalid Hussain, Ali Sajid, Chaudhry Shafiq, and Imtiaz Haider have also been named as accused. Shahbaz, who previously served as Punjab chief minister, has been accused of misusing his authority to illegally issue directives for cancellation of contract regarding the housing project. In March 2014, ex-CM Punjab visited the Ashiana-e-Iqbal project site and halted its bidding process, the reference stated. The Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) was looking after the project, but after then-CM's visit, it decided to assign the project to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) which resulted in awarding contract to the Lahore Casa Developers (JV), causing Rs715m loss to the exchequer, the reference said.
In its Lahore office, the NAB had arrested Shahbaz Sharif in the scam on October 5 when he appeared in compliance of summon for questioning concerning a probe into the Saaf Pani Company scam.
The NAB said that the "Contract for the housing scheme was won by a construction company titled Chaudhry Latif and Sons but former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and his aides awarded the Rs14 billion contract to Lahore Casa Developers - a proxy group of Paragon City (Pvt) Limited, which is said to be owned by Railways Minister Saad Rafique." "Fawad, who was implementation secretary to the chief minister Punjab at the time, levelled charges of wrongdoings against Chaudhry Latif and Sons so that the contract be awarded to Casa Developers," it stated.
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