An accountability court in Lahore on Saturday acquitted former Pakistan Prime Minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif and ten others in a major housing corruption scam case.
The people acquitted by the accountability court in the mega Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme corruption case include caretaker Privatisation Minister Fawad Hasan Fawad and former director general of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Ahad Khan Cheema among others, reported Dawn.
The 72-year-old Shehbaz, who is the younger brother of three-time ex-PM Nawaz Sharif, was accused by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in 2018 of ordering the cancellation of a contract given to bidder Chaudhry Latif and Sons for the controversial low-cost Ashiana housing scheme, launched by the Punjab government in 2010.
The contract was awarded to Lahore Casa Developers, a proxy group of Paragon City Private Limited, resulting in a loss of Rs 193 million. Shehbaz was also accused of directing the Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) to assign the project to LDA, which caused an estimated loss of Rs 715 million and the ultimate failure of the housing project by awarding the contract to Lahore Casa Developers.
Additionally, the ex-Punjab CM also allegedly directed the PLDC to Engineering Consultancy Services Punjab for Rs 192 million, while the actual cost was estimated to be Rs 35 million as quoted by Nespak, a known engineering consultancy. As a result, Shehbaz was arrested in 2018 along with Fawad, Cheema and several others.
The PML-N President and others were indicted in 2019. However, the NAB cleared Shehbaz from any wrongdoing this year. On Saturday, the accountability court heard the acquittal pleas of the former prime minister and others and accepted them.
On November 2, Judge Malik Ali Zulqarnain Awan of the accountability court reserved the verdict after concluding the final arguments presented by the counsels and the NAB prosecutors on acquittal pleas, Geo News reported.
After going through the NAB’s report, the judge allowed the applications of the accused persons and acquitted them in the reference. The judge observed: “There is no probability of the conviction in the case.”
After this, former information minister Marriyum Aurangzeb congratulated the PML-N leadership and workers on the acquittal of Shehbaz in the “false case for the sake of political vendetta”. “False cases were made by blackmailing the NAB chairman. After making up false cases, slanders and accusations were made,” she said on social media platform X.
Cheema, who is currently serving as the special assistant to caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, claimed that everyone witnessed 'injustice' in the case.
