Sharif’s London empire is worth £32 million: UK paper

KARACHI: In its latest report on the properties owned by the ‘super rich’ family of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, a UK paper on Sunday revealed that the assets Sharif family owned in London were estimated at at least £32 million.

One of the most priced property of them is Avenfield flats, now worth at least £7 million, Daily Mail reported.

The flats are at the centre of corruption charges the Sharif family is facing in Pakistan, where former prime minister has lived when in London since 1993, knocking four luxury flats together to make a single mansion.

According to the paper, the family are also accused of using dirty money to buy at least 21 UK properties on top of the Avenfield flats, most at equally grand Central London locations, in Mayfair, Chelsea and Belgravia.

“The total value of the properties is estimated at least £32 million,” it added.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan shared the MoS report with a caption stating, ‘how the Pakistani nation's wealth was looted through money laundering by corrupt rulers and their families’.

The PTI has campaigned against the PML-N leadership blaming them for siphoning off billions of rupees and hiding them in offshore accounts in UK and elsewhere.

“The family has made huge profits from other sites which have not figured in court – such as the swankiest address of all, at One Hyde Park Place, which Nawaz Sharif’s son Hassan sold for £43 million.”

Untangling the web of the Sharifs’ British real estate portfolio is not easy, the report said adding that the properties are registered via a bewildering network of companies, trusts and bank accounts.

The PTI chief told the newspaper that this case has raised the awareness of corruption in Pakistan to unprecedented levels. Before, people used to accept it. It was part of the colonial mindset. Not any more.

‘But you in Britain have to play your part. Corruption and money laundering that transfers wealth from poor countries to rich causes poverty and death.

‘We have massive unemployment, 25 million children out of school and one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. I guess money laundering is making it more expensive for Londoners to buy houses. For us, the consequences are unethical, immoral, disastrous.’