NAB gets 10-day remand of Shahbaz

LAHORE: An accountability court on Saturday granted 10-day physical remand of the Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the Ashiana-i-Iqbal housing scam.

The NAB officials produced Shahbaz before the accountability court judge Najam-ul-Hassan amid tight security as heavy contingents of the law enforcement agencies had cordoned off the premises. He was brought to the court from the NAB Lahore office in an armoured vehicle escorted by the police and Rangers. The security officials didn’t allow any unauthorised person to enter the court. However, Shahbaz’s sons, Hamza Shahbaz and Salman Shahbaz, were allowed to attend the proceedings.

NAB prosecutor Waris Ali Janjua was leading the Bureau’s legal team, while Azam Nazir Tarar and Amjad Pervaiz represented Shahbaz.

The judge summoned Shahbaz and his counsel as well as the prosecution team in his chamber at 10:15am. But Shahbaz’s counsel protested and argued that arguments should be made in an open court. On this, the judge said the courtroom was crowded with the people who were not related to the case. However, on the protest of lawyers, the hearing was shifted to the courtroom after clearing it from irrelevant people at 11am.

The prosecutor argued that the project was awarded to Chaudhry Latif and Sons after approval from the PLDC Board of Directors and through open bidding. He said the contract was awarded to the said company on January 24, 2013 and a sum of Rs 75 million was paid to the construction firm as advance mobilisation.

He said Chaudhry Latif and Sons started their construction work and no other bidder challenged the award of the contract within 15 days as per PEPRA rules. However, on February 25, 2013, Shahbaz ordered an inquiry on a bogus complaint and constituted an inquiry committee, headed by Tariq Bajwa, to look into any wrongdoing in awarding the contract, the prosecutor alleged.

He said Bajwa, the then finance secretary, completed the audit and submitted his report on March 5, 2013. As per the committee report, the contract was awarded as per the PEPRA rules with some minor irregularities, the prosecutor added. He said Shahbaz illegally assumed the powers of PLDC Board of Directors and referred the matter to the Anti-Corruption Establishment with the help of co-accused Fawad Hassan Fawad.

The prosecutor said according to the NAB’s investigation, the bogus complaint was filed by Kanpro Services Private Limited, which paid a bribe worth millions to Fawad, the-then secretary implementation, to cancel the contract.

It is pertinent to mention that Kanpro Services Private Limited is said to be owned by Kamran Kiyani – the brother of former army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani. The prosecutor added that the accused, while chairing a meeting, illegally ordered the transfer of Ashiana project to the LDA from PLDC which, he added, was constituted to complete projects like Ashiana and only its Board of Directors had the authority to take decision.

After getting the project, the LDA handed over the Ashiana project to Bismillah Engineering, which is a proxy company of Paragon City.

The prosecutor implored the court to grant the physical remand of Shahbaz, saying more investigation was required. On the other hand, the counsel for Shahbaz argued that Chaudhary Latif was an absconder in an Anti-Corruption Establishment case and his company was blacklisted. He argued that the corruption never happened because the contract was never awarded. He added that the contract was cancelled earlier because Shahbaz caught the corruption himself.

Shahbaz’s legal team opposed the NAB’s plea of physical remand, saying that their client had always cooperated with the NAB and appeared before the investigators on different stages of the case from inquiry to investigation. The counsel said the allegations against his client were of documentary nature and under such circumstances physical custody of his client was unnecessary. Shahbaz had presented himself before NAB multiple times and attended the court hearings, so there were no grounds to arrest him, his counsel added. In his statement, the PML-N president, addressing the judge, said he didn’t do anything illegal and wrong and had always worked for the prosperity of the nation and country. He said the company was blacklisted on corruption charges and 90 million of the looted money was recovered.

Shahbaz said the cases against him were nothing but political victimisation. “I worked day and night to serve the people,” he said and added that he had saved billions by personally intervening, citing the example of Rs 75 billion in the Orange Line Metro Train project. The judge after hearing arguments of both parties reserved the orders on the remand plea for a few minutes and later awarded physical remand of Shahbaz for 10 days, ordering the NAB to produce him before the court again on Oct 16.

The judge wrote in his orders, “Shahbaz's counsel had opposed the NAB's application for their client's physical remand citing his cooperation with the investigation and the fact that ‘the scam is based on documentary evidence’.

"This is the first physical remand of the accused and he has been served with grounds of arrest," the court observed in the order. "Being a white collar crime of mega corruption, the hidden aspects still have to be unearthed by joining the accused in the investigation ... so the application is allowed."

Later, Shahbaz was shifted back to the NAB Lahore Office.