Sharif family’s offshore companies figured in Supreme Court in 2000

Zafar Ali Shah case

ISLAMABAD: The off-shore companies allegedly owned by Sharif family in the British Virgin Islands have remained a topic of discussion during the 90s and in the Supreme Court of Pakistan too. These companies were discussed in 2000 but the Sharif family has been vehemently denying owning any off-shore company before 2006.

In the Zafar Ali Shah case, the Supreme Court was presented a long list of properties owned by the Sharif family including purchase of four flats in London and it was alleged that the Sharif family had purchased these properties in London through the BVI companies.

Though a judicial commission will investigate the issue of off-shore companies in the wake of Panama Papers, the Supreme Court had already heard a similar case against the Sharifs but did not give any verdict on it because the nature of the case was validation of military coup and not the alleged off-shore companies of Sharif family.

Senator Zafar Ali Shah, senior leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, who went to the Supreme Court against military coup in 1999 and the case is famously known as Zafar Ali Shah case, while talking to The News said that Pervez Musharraf had hurled allegations of money laundering and off-shore companies against Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif but despite being so powerful, Musharraf could not prove a single allegation during his entire tenure.

He said that the SC gave a verdict in favour of Musharraf but only to the extent of military coup as no verdict was given on the alleged and self-created corruption charges against the Sharif family.

It is worth mentioning here that the then Attorney General of Pakistan while arguing before the apex court in 2000 had presented that the Sharif family was involved in “money laundering through traveler cheques, dollar bearer certificates, overseas accounts and purchase of property in London”.

The court was told that the government was in possession of “extracts from the British Virgin Island Corporate Register about payment for purchase of property in London”. The Musharraf government also claimed that it had gathered the record of “Payments to Shamrock Consulting Corporation through Salman Zia (alleged front man of Sharif family) and photographs of Land Registry Records about property purchased by Sharif family in London.”

The case was heard by the following judges: Irshad Hasan Khan, Muhammad Bashir Jehangiri, Sh. Ijaz Nisar, Abdur Rehman Khan, Sh Riaz Ahmed, Ch Muhammad Arif, Munir A Sheikh, Rashid Aziz Khan, Nazim Hussain Siddiqui, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary, Qazi Muhammad Farooq and Rana Bhagwan Das.

The off-shore companies related to Sharif family remained a topic of discussion during the 90s and information surfaced many times in the media but the first family had been denying this since day one. Even Senator Rehman Malik’s interview to media in the mid-nineties hit many headlines in which he claimed to have investigated many affairs of Sharif Family abroad but not, till date, has been proven.