Shah Nawaz Mohal/Raja Faisal
The Joint Investigation Team, tasked to probe the foreign assets of Sharif family in its final report submitted to Supreme Court, has recommended that a reference against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his sons Hassan and Hussain Nawaz be filed with National Accountability Bureau as during the past 60 days’ investigation many differences and discrepancies have surfaced.
The JIT in its report, made public within hours of submission, wrote that ‘significant gap/disparity amongst the known and declared sources of income and the wealth accumulated by the respondent No 1 (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif), 6 (Maryam Nawaz), 7 (Hussain Nawaz) and 8 (Hassan Nawaz) have been observed. ”
‘The financial structure and health of companies in Pakistan having linkage to the respondents also do not substantiate the wealth of the respondents’, it continued.
The report also highlighted the irregular movement of huge amounts in shape of loans and gifts from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-based company – Hill Metals Establishment – United Kingdom-based companies – Flagship Investments Limited and others – and United Arab Emirates-based company – Capital FZE – to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from Hussain Nawaz and Pakistan-based companies of PM as well.
‘The role of off-shore companies is critically important as several offshore companies have been identified to be linked with their businesses in UK while conducting this investigation. These companies were mainly used for inflow of funds into UK-based companies; which not only acquired expensive properties in UK from such funds but also revolved these funds amongst their companies of UK, KSA, UAE and Pakistan’, it read.
‘In addition to the companies, respondent No 1 (Nawaz, Sharif) and 7 (Hussain Nawaz) have been found to be recipients of these funds movement into Pakistan as gifts/loans whose purpose/reason have not been justified by them before the JIT. Needless to say, these UK companies were loss-making entities with heavily engaged in revolving of funds vis-a-vis creating a smoke screen that the expensive properties of UK were due to the business operations of these UK companies’.
JIT raised questions on the companies’ seed money as the seed money used to open the companies was too minimal to carry out any business. Furthermore, no justifications were presented to prove the money-trail of the heavy transections made through the off-shore companies as well as amounts to buy the Mayfair flats through these companies.
The JIT also referred to Section 9 (A)(V) of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 — which stated that ‘A holder of public office, or any other person, is said to commit or to have committed the offence of corruption and corrupt practices, if he or any of his dependents or benamidars owns and possesses or has acquired right or title to any assets or holds irrevocable power of attorney in respect of any assets or pecuniary resources disproportionate to his known sources of income, which he cannot reasonably account for or maintains a standard of assets beyond that which is commensurate with his sources of income’.
Moving ahead, the JIT also invokes Section 14 (c) of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, according to which ‘In any trial of an offence punishable under clause (v) of sub-section (a) of Section 9 of this ordinance, the fact that the accused person on his behalf, is in possession for which the accused person cannot satisfactorily account, of assets and pecuniary resources disproportionate to his known sources of income, or that such person has, at or about the time of the commission of the offence with which he is charged, obtained an accretion to his pecuniary resources or property for which he cannot satisfactorily account, the Court shall presume, unless the contrary is proved, that the accused person is guilty of the offence of corruption and corrupt practices and his conviction therefore shall not be invalid by reason only that it is based solely on such presumption’.
JIT in its report has also mentioned various sections of Qanoon-e-Shahadat Ordinance, 1984 including Article 122 that deals with burden of proving fact within knowledge, Article 177 that deals with burden of proof on an individual who exerts the existence of a fact, and burden of proof on in a person who is bound to prove the existence of any fact, Article 129 that deals with presumption of existence of CD retain Dacre on part of court, and Article 2 (4), (7) and (8) that deal with the definition of ‘proved).
