The Panama case was not about corruption but about lust for power.
This was stated by Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Marriyum Aurangzeb, while sharing her thoughts with the media outside Supreme Court here on Thursday. She said that not a single case of misuse of power and corruption had ever been reported or unearthed against Nawaz Sharif during his three stints as the prime minister and two tenures as chief minister of Punjab, a fact that was corroborated by the apex court itself also.
The minister said that Imran Khan in his petition had accused the prime minister of money laundering, stealing public money and concealing his assets and he had been trying to use this case as crutches to revive his political fortunes and gaining access to the corridors of power, which amply reflected his mala fide intentions.
She said while Imran had filed a case against the prime minister in the Supreme Court, he himself was running away from the cases against him in the courts and ECP because he knew that he was guilty of money laundering – that he used to set up Niazi Service — and receiving funds from the Hindu and Israeli lobbies.
Marriyum pointed out that he was also a proclaimed offender from the Anti-Terrorism Court, where he was wanted in the case involving attack on the parliament and PTV. She said that for the last four years Imran had been persistently telling lies and hurling allegations against the PML-N government and trying to mislead and befool the nation through a falsified propaganda and there had been no change in his narrative.
She advised Imran to unlock the Ehtsab Commission in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and put that lock on his own wagging tongue. The minister said that while Imran was fighting a case for grabbing power, the prime minister was fighting a case for the supremacy of law and constitution, trust of people repeatedly reposed in him, economic progress and prosperity of the country, CPEC and above all the elimination of the scourge of terrorism.
Marriyum expressed the hope and confidence that the prime minister would emerge unscathed from the Panama case as the Supreme Court would exonerate him from all the allegations and his detractors would be forced to wind up the fancy street (Meena Bazar) that they had established in the country for the last four years.
The minister said that the reservations expressed against the JIT by the Sharif family from day one still persisted due to the manner in which it had conducted the probe. She said that all the documents presented by the Sharif family in the court were duly attested, notarized and verified by the relevant authorities. She reiterated that the Sharif family had every right to rebut and challenge the authenticity of the documents produced by a detective relative of a member of the JIT.