ISLAMABAD: National Accountancy Bureau (NAB) Investigation Officer (IO) Muhammad Kamran Thursday informed the accountability court that there was a contradiction between the statements of Tariq Shafi and the reply submitted by United Arab Emirates (UAE) regarding the sale agreements of Gulf Steel Mills.
Accountability Court Judge Arshad Malik conducted the hearing of the Flagship Investment reference filed by NAB against the Sharif family.
During the course of proceedings, the defence lawyer, Khawaja Haris, continued cross-examining NAB’s IO Muhammad Kamran.
The IO informed the court that Shafi was never served any notice to make him a part of the NAB investigation as he had already recorded his statements to the joint investigation team (JIT).
He said that Shafi’s statement regarding the sale agreement of Gulf Steel Mills shares was contradicting the response of UAE officials, however, NAB didn’t serve him a notice in this regard.
The accountability court also witnessed an exchange of heated remarks between Nawaz Sharif’s counsel and NAB’s prosecutor during the hearing.
Haris accused the NAB prosecutor of intervening cross-examination and requested the court to send the NAB IO out of the courtroom for some time.
NAB’s prosecutor Sardar Muzafar Abbasi replied that the defence wanted the IO to give a statement of its choice and the IO wouldn’t leave the room.
The defence said that they would abandon the proceedings if the IO didn’t go outside, after which, the court ordered the NAB IO to leave the room for a short period of time.
Later, the court adjourned the hearing till Friday [today], wherein the cross-examination would continue.