ISLAMABAD: The accountability court
hearing the Avenfield properties reference against the Sharif family resumed its proceedings on Tuesday.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, daughter Maryam and son-in-law Capt (r) Safdar appeared in the court after skipping the last two
hearings as they were unable to depart from Lahore owing to inclement weather.
Maryam’s counsel Amjad Pervez resumed cross-exam
ination of Wajid Zia, an additional director at the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) who headed the Panama case joint investigat
ion team (JIT) which probed the Sharif family’s assets last year.
Zia informed the court about correspondence of the JIT with regards to the London flats. During the
hearing, the prosecution’s request to submit three MLAs [
mutual legal assistance] as evidence was dismissed.
The Avenfield properties reference is among three filed against Nawaz and his family by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) last year on the Supreme Court’s directives.
Last Wednesday, Nawaz’s counsel Khawaja Haris concluded Zia’s cross-exam
ination in the Avenfield case. After Haris concluded, Maryam’s counsel began his cross-exam
ination.
Sources, meanwhile, said that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has acquired new documents from London which state that the Sharif family’s London apartments were transferred to the possession of offshore companies Nielson and Nescoll in 1993-1995.
According to
NAB sources, the Avenfield properties were transferred to the offshore companies at the time when Nawaz Sharif’s children, Hussain and Hasan, were young and did not have any source of income. Therefore, they cannot be considered owners of the properties and thus the former premier was their real owner.
Published in Daily Times, April 18th 2018.
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