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An accountability court on Saturday extended physical remand of leader of opposition in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz for another seven days in alleged illegal assets and money laundering case.
Earlier, the special prosecutor of the National Accountability Bureau sought 15-day extension in his physical remand. The court asked the prosecutor as to how many days Hamza had already spent in physical remand with the NAB. The prosecutor said the suspect was on remand for the last 52 days, however, new evidences had been surfaced against him and his brother Salman Shahbaz after their employees were interrogated.
The prosecutor also filed a report to the court and stated that assets worth Rs 3.3 billion had been identified so far as illegally accumulated by Hamza, his brother Salman and their father Shahbaz Sharif.
The report revealed that the family of the suspect committed massive money laundering in the name of foreign remittances and loans. It said both brothers established two "benami" companies M/s Unitas Steel and M/s Good Nature Trading in 2016.
The report said chief financial officer and other officials of the Unitas Steel had been interrogated by the NAB. It said the suspects also established another benami company M/s Unitas Distillery, which was not found in the record FBR.
It said Hamza received benefits from different family members including brother Salman and sister Rabia Ali under the garb of gifts. It claimed that investigation conducted so far revealed that Salman and Rabia received foreign remittances in their bank accounts, which found to be fictitious.
The report further said both Salman and Rabia had not joined investigation while the suspect (Hamza) in custody had been non-cooperative during the investigation. The prosecutor therefore urged the court to grant further remand of the suspect as his custody was essential to procure more evidence and detection of hidden assets.
The defence counsel however said whatever the NAB's report said was not new. He said the prosecutor had already mentioned Unitas Company on the last hearing.
He said all the companies and properties mentioned by the NAB were already declared in all tax documents. He asked the court to not grant further custody of Hamza to the NAB.
The court however extended the physical remand of Hamza for seven days and directed the NAB to produce him again on August 10. Earlier, the lawyers and court's staff expelled a person from the courtroom for disrupting the proceedings. The person who was later identified as Sheikh Iqbal shouted slogans against Hamza and his father Shahbaz Sharif.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019

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