Sharif family’s wealth doesn’t meet their income: JIT

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), constituted by Supreme Court to investigate the hyped Panama Leaks case, found disparity in the Sharif family’s source of income and wealth which it failed to present.

The final JIT report which was submitted in SC  on Monday stated that, “significant gap/disparity amongst the known and declared sources of income and the wealth accumulated by the Respondent No. 1 (PM), 6 (Maryam Nawaz), 7 (Hussain Nawaz) and 8 (Hassan Nawaz) have been observed.”

The JIT members expressed discomfort on the money trail submitted by Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif’s sons Hassan and Hussain Nawaz.

Highlighting three more off-shore companies of the Sharif family, JIT said “the role of off-shore companies is critically important as several offshore companies (Nescoll Limited, Nielson Enterprises Limited, Alanna Services Limited, Lamkin S.A, Coomber Group Inc., Hiltern International Limited) 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 revolve these funds amongst their companies of UK, KSA, UAE and Pakistan.”

It was also stated that Nawaz Sharif and his sons have share in Ittefaq Sugar Mills, Ittefaq Textiles and Hamza Spinning Mills. “These companies were mainly incorporated in 1980s and 1990s when the respondent 1 (PM) was holding public office,” it continued.

“The respondents being shareholders injected nominal capital as seed money and these companies were mainly entrusted with borrowed funds from bank/financial institutions/foreign institutions or foreign incorporated special purpose vehicles.”

The report said that Nawaz Sharif and Hussain Nawaz took funds as gift and loan but they were unable to defend this before JIT. Needless to say, These UK companies were loss-making entities with heavily engaged in revolving of funds vis-à-vis creating a smoke screen that the expensive properties of UK were due to the business operations of these UK companies.

JIT also declared Maryam Nawaz as beneficial owner of Nescoll Limited and Nielson Enterprises Limited and accused her of commiting criminal offence by concealing it. Maryam had earlier refuted all the allegations and said she was only a trustee of the companies.

“The trust declaration documents, presented by Ms Maryam Safdar to the JIT as well as the photocopies of these documents submitted in the Honourable Supreme Court of Pakistan are fake and fabricated documents,” the JIT stated.