LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday declared that an inquiry against ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif for illegally allotting plots of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) was still underway.

“The case of illegal allotment of LDA plots by Nawaz Sharif is still under investigation at the NAB Lahore. Its closure has not been recommended at any level,” a NAB spokesperson responded to reports that the investigation against the PML-N Quaid had been closed in this matter.

Since the last week transfer of the bureau’s director general for Lahore, Shahzad Saleem, who remained in the headlines in recent years for proactively pursuing alleged corruption cases of Nawaz Sharif, his brother and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif and their family members, there was an impression in some political and media sections that perhaps this arrangement has been made to ‘facilitate’ the Sharifs.

Bureaucrat Jamil Ahmed, who was waiting for posting at the bureau’s headquarters, has been posted as director general for Lahore region.

A source privy to the development told Dawn that the anti-graft body had virtually closed the LDA plots allotment inquiry against Nawaz for its failure to trace the beneficiaries. “The closure of this matter at this stage might have triggered speculations that after the appointment of new Lahore DG the Sharifs have started getting favours. Thereby, the NAB was quite categorical in this regard,” he said.

The NAB, in September 2018, had reopened investigation into the allotment of plots to 13 people in violation of rules and the laid-down procedure during the tenure of Nawaz Sharif as chief minister in late 1980s.

The NAB had summoned all beneficiaries through Lahore police. But police told the bureau that they had failed to trace any of the beneficiaries.

The investigation into this case was first initiated in 2000 after Gen Musharraf toppled Mr Sharif’s government (in Oct 1999) but later it was not pursued.

Mr Sharif has been in London since Nov 2019 for his ‘medical treatment’. Several PML-N leaders have recently claimed that he is returning to the country ‘very soon’.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2021