–Investigator says ’employees’ had bought 28 plots and piece of land using residential address of Pervaiz Elahi, Shujaat Hussain
LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday exonerated Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leaders Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi in the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) plots case.
The veteran politicians, who are currently in an alliance with Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, were facing a reference over allegedly causing a loss to the national exchequer by influencing LDA officials to exempt more than 21 kanals of land and 28 plots measuring 10 marlas each in a private housing society in Lahore.
The bureau had launched a probe into the matter in 2000, and found that the two allegedly purchased the land through their front men — Mirza Aslam Baig and Mohammad Nawaz. However, investigators failed to make a breakthrough in the case for almost 15 years. Till 2017, the inquiry was transferred to at least five officials but to no avail. Finally on Nov 13, 2017, the inquiry was transferred to Waqarul Haq who concluded that the investigation should be closed.
Meanwhile, both the political leaders had appeared before the NAB authorities a few times in 2017 and 2018.
The investigator said that the Chaudhry brothers appeared before a NAB investigation team on November 6, 2018, and filled a questionnaire related to details of their properties, besides answering questions for 90 minutes. He said that letters were sent out to fill in any gaps that may have been left during the investigation or in the questionnaire filled on Nov 6.
During the investigations, the accountability watchdog ‘found’ that the people who had been mentioned as “front men” were “employees” of the Chaudhry brothers and they had purchased the plots for themselves. The reference mentioned that Mirza Aslam Baig had used the residential address of Chaudhry brothers while purchasing the plots.
The NAB authorities, according to the watchdog, could not find any concrete “evidence, documented or oral”, therefore it had decided to close the inquiry based on a source report.
