LAHORE: PML-N President and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif will appear before the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Tuesday (today) in money laundering and income-beyond-means investigation.

“Shahbaz will appear before the NAB’s combined investigation team at its Thokar Niaz Beg office on Tuesday morning and respond to its queries,” a PML-N leader told Dawn on Monday.

He said PML-N workers had been asked to reach the NAB provincial headquarters on the occasion.

He said since the party president had secured pre-arrest bail from the Lahore High Court, he would confidently appear before the bureau and respond to its queries which had already been answered by him in a thorough reply.

Shahbaz also reportedly consulted his legal team in this regard on Monday.

In early last week, the NAB had failed to arrest the opposition leader during a raid at his residence after he skipped its hearing. Subsequently the following day, Shahbaz got pre-arrest bail till June 17.

Another PML-N leader said it was not the domain of NAB to investigate private businesses of Suleman Shahbaz.

Responding to NAB’s questions to the PML-N president, he said: “Shahbaz is not the director in any business concern of the Sharif group of industries. He has personal assets in the form of dairy farming and agriculture, which have been declared to the FBR and the Election Commission.”

He said: “Nisar Gill was inducted as political affairs director and Malik Ali Ahmed Khan as director strategy and policy into the CM office. The then Punjab government didn’t conduct business with the Good Nature Company, which was not a paper company but incorporated by the SECP and registered by the FBR. The Bank of Punjab had not sanctioned the loan of a single penny to the Good Nature Company.”

A defamation suit against PM’s adviser Shahzad Akbar and his company would be filed soon for making these baseless allegations, the PML-N leader said, adding no money had been embezzled from the government projects by Shahbaz Sharif and no money laundering committed.

“Inward remittances are protected by the Economic Protection Reform Act 1992. The NAB authorities had fabricated the evidence on the factual side. The NAB prosecution manoeuvered the meaning of the fields of the legitimate telegraphic transfers,” he alleged.

Besides, he said Shahbaz’s sons Hamza and Suleman had sold his land measuring 187 kanal and 11 marla in mauza Dorahtta to both Nisar Gill and Malik Ali Ahmed Khan and there was a documentary evidence of this transaction.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2020