Bureau Report
LAHORE: The authorities have placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) the wife of National Assembly Opposition Leader Shahbaz Sharif and his two daughters in connection with a money laundering probe, it emerged on Friday.
The members of the Sharif family have been investigated in the ongoing mega money laundering scam against them.
The government put on the no-fly list some 10 members of the Sharif family following approval from the federal cabinet in this regard. Following the move, the concerned persons will not be able to travel abroad following the conclusion of the case. The move comes two weeks after the government arrested Sharif after the Lahore High Court rejected his bail petition in the said case.
According to a NAB investigation report, the chief financial officer of the businesses owned by the Sharif family, Muhammad Usman, laundered money on behalf of his employer.
Usman, according to INP, started working at Ramzan Sugar Mills in 2005 for Rs90,000 a month pay. The following year, the family of deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif acquired Hudaibiya Engineering Company from the Shehbaz family.
In 2007, the Shehbaz family registered more companies, including the Sharif Feed Mill, to expand their business.
The bank accounts of Shehbaz’s wife, Nusrat Shehbaz, and his sons were used for foreign remittances and loans. On the direction of Suleman Shahbaz, a trading agency, Waqar Trading Company, made fake foreign remittances in the region of Rs600 million.
On the other hand, The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) revealed on Friday that Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif, who is in the bureau’s custody in the money laundering and asset beyond means case, bought four flats in London’s upscale neighbourhoods while being in exile.
According to details of the PML-N president’s London properties released by the corruption watchdog, he purchased four flats for over £1.3 million and borrowed the amount from Barkley Bank, businessmen, and niece Asma Dar.
He purchased a flat in London’s Upper Barkley Street area for £235,000 in 2005, the bureau disclosed. He borrowed £75,000 from a businessman and got a £160,000 loan from Barkley Bank to cover the cost of the flat.
Later in 2007, Shehbaz Sharif purchased another flat in the British capital for £160,000, and this time, he also borrowed £16,075 from a businessman and arranged the rest of the amount through a bank loan worth £143,000 to pay the cost.
He bought the third flat for £650,000 in the same year, for which he took a £40,000 loan from a businessman and £647,114 from Barkley Bank. Of the total cost of the fourth flat he bought for £286,007 in 2009, he borrowed £230,607 from a businessman and £55,400 from a close relative.
