LAHORE: Two suspects on Saturday turned approvers against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif and his sons, Hamza and Suleman, in a money laundering case.
The suspects — Aftab Mehmood and Shahid Rafique — recorded their statements before a judicial magistrate in which they admitted to having committed money laundering at the behest of the former Punjab chief minister and his sons.
Earlier, another suspect in the case, Mushtaq Cheeni, had also turned approver against Hamza and Suleman.
Aftab Mehmood, whom the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had described as the frontman of the Shehbaz family at the time of his arrest, in his statement confessed that he made illegal telegraphic transfers (TTs) worth more than $2.4 million to Pakistan to benefit the Sharifs in 2008-09.
He said he operated a money exchange named Usman International in the United Kingdom and transferred the amount through TT in the bank accounts of Hamza, Suleman, Nusrat Shehbaz and Rabia Imran Ali using fake identities.
Mehmood said that his cousin Shahid Rafique — the other approver — used to collect cash against the TTs from Shehbaz family equivalent to the amount sent by him [Mehmood] in dollars.
“Those TTs were arranged in order to whiten the black money of the beneficiaries; Hamza, Suleman, Nusrat and Rabia,” Mehmood said, according to a copy of his statement.
Rafique also confessed to have carried out transactions using fake identities in connivance with his cousin Mehmood.
NAB Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal had earlier approved the applications of Mehmood and Rafique to turn approvers against Shehbaz Sharif family. An accountability court subsequently allowed a request to transfer the suspects from jail into NAB custody in order to record their statements.
Hamza, the opposition leader in Punjab Assembly, is in NAB custody in the money laundering case while Suleman resides abroad. Shehbaz, meanwhile, is out on bail.
An accountability court on Saturday extended Hamza’s physical remand until August 21 after NAB said it required time for further investigation. He has been in NAB custody for 59 days.
During an initial investigation, NAB had said that it had found that Shehbaz and his sons Hamza and Suleman had accumulated assets to the tune of Rs3 billion which were disproportionate to their known sources of income. “The three suspects in order to justify the acquisition of assets have mentioned foreign remittances worth Rs1.3bn,” it added.
The bureau alleged that most of the remittances were fictitious and the process of remittances was used for “laundering the assets” disproportionate to their known sources of income.