Islamabad | Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who arrives in Pakistan on Saturday along with his daughter Maryam is likely to be arrested after the Lahore court gave a seven-year sentence in a corruption case related to buying high-end apartments in London.
Over 10,000 police officers have been posted in Lahore ahead of Sharif’s arrival in Pakistan before the general election. The city administration has ordered that mobile phones will be shut in the city from 3 pm to 12 am.
In a massive crackdown on the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), over 300 workers and leaders of the party were detained in Lahore ahead of the arrival of its ‘lifetime’ leader Nawaz Sharif, who would be arrested along with his daughter and transported and be moved to a jail via a helicopter.
Earlier, Nawaz Sharif’s petition to transfer the remaining two corruption cases against him to another accountability court was dismissed giving another blow to the embattled former Pakistan prime minister on the eve of his return to the country and possible arrest.
In 2017, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif resigned after the 2016 Panama Papers leaks implicated him. Panama Papers showed that Sharif along with his children owned offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. The companies identified include Nescol Ltd, Nielsen Enterprises Ltd and Hangon Property Holdings Ltd, incorporated in 1993, 1994 and 2007 respectively.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered a probe into the issue in 2017. Upon finding ‘insufficient evidence against Sharif, the matter was referred to a Joint Investigation Team. The JIT found that the Sharifs’ British Virgin Islands companies were said to have been used for channeling ill-gotten, undeclared and unaccounted-for wealth with which he and his children bought properties in London. Based on the JIT’s findings, a case of money laundering was filed against Sharif.
The JIT found, among other things, that one of the London properties, in the Avenfield House in posh Mayfair, was registered in the name of Sharif’s sons and in Maryam Nawaz’s name. Maryam was also the owner of two of the Virgin Islands offshore companies. The JIT submitted its report on July 10 last year.
A Pakistani tribunal court last Friday held Sharif and his daughter Maryam guilty and sentenced them to prison They were convicted in absentia; both were in London, where Sharif’s critically ill wife is in hospital.
Sharif had alleged that it was a ‘judicial witch-hunt’ which was being conducted against him because of the December 2016 media reveal about the discord between the powerful Pakistani military and elected civilian government.
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