Sharifs’ Dubai factory was liquidated, not sold: Kaira

Recalling that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had claimed before parliament his family had set up a mill in Saudi Arabia with the money they received after selling their Dubai factory, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Qamar Zaman Kaira claimed on Tuesday that the Dubai factory was never sold, but it was liquidated in fact.

Talking to a private news channel, Kaira said the factory in question was actually defaulted and had got loans from Bank of Oman and BCCI which, according to him, had not yet been paid.

Elaborating further, he said the factory was liquidated and the amount received was directed towards loan payment but these loans were not paid in entirety.

“The amount recovered from the liquidation was less than the payable loan, so some of it was paid to Bank of Oman and BCCI while the case stood still on the remaining directors. These directors – PM must name them – were put on the Exit Control List in Dubai because they were under debts. Then BCCI itself got liquidated and these loans were written off. So physically, Sharif family earned nothing from the Dubai factory and thus there were no profits at all to set up a new mill in Saudi Arabia with,” Kaira was quoted as saying.

The PPP leader said that the Supreme Court was giving credence to the discussions held in talkshows or in public speeches, adding that the court had played talkshows in the same courtroom on a projector so these discussions and statements were being considered admissible evidence.

Kaira said that in corruption cases, the principle was that the litigant only proved the ownership of a certain property in the name of the opponent and it was then up to the court and the investigative agencies that had to investigate it.

“It is also then the responsibility of the defender to prove that the property was bought with legal money. These properties have already been admitted by PM’s family. So it is now up to them to clear their names”, Kaira went on to say.

Kaira also demanded the prime minister named the directors of the Dubai mill that he had claimed to have sold and also named the buyer of that mill.