Former Bureaucrats Fawad Hassan Fawad and Ahad Cheema, who are part of the incumbent federal cabinet, have also been declared innocent.
LAHORE: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-Nov 18th, 2023) An accountability court on Saturday acquitted Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and former Prime Minister Shehbaz Shari in the Ashiana-e-Iqbal Housing Scheme case.
Accountability Court Judge Ali Zulqarnain announced the verdict.
The court also declared former senior bureaucrat Fawad Hasan Fawad, former Director General of the Lahore Development Authority Ahad Khan Cheema, and others as innocent in the case.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) declared that, during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Punjab, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif did not derive any benefit from government funds or misuse his public office in relation to the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme case.
The NAB also exonerated other co-accused individuals of any wrongdoing.
This latest clearance by the corruption watchdog follows the previous dismissal of Shehbaz Sharif, his family members, and others in a money laundering case. The Ashiana scandal surfaced in January 2018 when NAB accused Sharif, then the opposition leader, of misusing his authority to unlawfully issue directives for canceling the contract related to the housing project during his tenure as Chief Minister in 2014.
The Former Chief Minister was accused of cancelling the bidding process which caused huge loss to the national exchequer. The NAB had said earlier that he had visited the Ashiana-e-Iqbal project site and halted its bidding process, leading to the project being assigned to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) instead of the Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC).
The NAB said that Shehbaz Sharif’s decision resulted in the contract being awarded to Lahore Casa Developers (JV), causing a loss of Rs715 million to the exchequer.
Shehbaz Sharif was arrested by NAB on October 5, 2018, in connection with the scam. NAB asserted that the contract for the housing scheme, initially won by Chaudhry Latif and Sons, was awarded to Lahore Casa Developers, a proxy group of Paragon City (Pvt) Limited, allegedly owned by then Railways Minister Saad Rafique. Senior bureaucrat Fawad Hasan Fawad, former Director General Ahad Khan Cheema, and several others were arrested later that year.
