Shahbaz Sharif and his sons face charges amounting to 25 billion rupees.
Lahore:
Pakistan’s main investigative body registered an FIR against opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif, Prime Minister’s friend Imran Khan and three others in a multibillion-dollar scam.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Sunday registered the case against President of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Shahbaz Sharif, his sons – Hamza and Suleman -, Prime Minister’s friend Imran Khan, Jahangir Tareen and his son Ali Tareen, on money laundering, counterfeiting, breach of trust crime and deception of public shareholders.
Ali Tareen and his son are accused of defrauding and laundering 4.35 billion rupees in this case, while Shahbaz Sharif and his sons face similar charges amounting to 25 billion rupees.
The complaint comes days after the Lahore High Court quashed a case filed by the Pakistan Security and Exchange Commission (SECP) with the FIA against JDW Sugar Mills and Farooqi Pulp Mills and Shahbaz Sharif’s Al-Arabia Sugar Mills on the basis of “procedural inequity and to be a dictated exercise”.
The FIA said the court had in fact given it the power to go against those involved in the sugar scam without any discrimination.
Sharif Shahbaz and his son Hamza are in Kot Lakhpat prison in Lahore on remand in another money laundering case instituted by the country’s anti-corruption body, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), while his more young son Suleman is in London and has already been declared at large by a local court in the NAB money laundering case.
Tareen and his son recently returned from London. Ali is the owner of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) ‘Multan Sultan’ franchise.
The FIA has not made an arrest in this case so far.
The Sugar Commission of Inquiry’s forensic audit report, which was released last May, revealed more than Rs 150 billion of fraud in the production, sale and export of the product each. year by sugar barons, including Tareen and a brother of the incumbent Federal Minister Khusro Bakhtiar.
The report revealed how the “sugar cartel” in the country, comprising 88 factories, in conjunction with some government departments, including the Sugar Advisory Board, and others, committed fraud in the supply of cane to sugar, sugar manufacturing, local market sales, export subsidies and billions of rupees in tax evasion.
The government ordered the relevant authorities to launch a massive crackdown on the sugar barons.
