The British journalist revealed that Shahzad Akbar and Pakistani lawyers are trying to bring back Sharif family from London.
Islamabad (Pakistan Point News – 15th July, 2019) Daily Mail journalist David Rose, who wrote a news story on alleged embezzlement and money laundering of former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, has claimed that the government of Pakistan is trying to bring back former finance minister Ishaq Dar along with Shehbaz Sharif’s family.
Speaking to HUM News, he said that he had been working on the corruption story of Shehbaz Sharif for a while.
He said that he interviewed Aftab Mehmood using his contacts, while he also met Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar in London who gave further details.
He said that he wanted to highlight the misuse of UK aid and not the aid itself.
The British journalist revealed that Shahzad Akbar and Pakistani lawyers are trying to bring back Sharif family from London.
He added that the Pakistani government has signed an agreement with UK authorities regarding Ishaq Dar’s repatriation that he has seen himself.
The Sharif family, already facing charges of corruption and money laundering, had got a serious blow from the United Kingdom with the British investigators believing that Shahbaz Sharif and his family had embezzled millions of Pounds from £500 million aid given to his government in Punjab.
According to a report published in the Daily Mail, Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) had poured £500 million of UK taxpayers' money in form of aid to Punjab during the tenure of Shahbaz Sharif as chief minister.
"Yet, say investigators, all the time that DFID was heaping him and his government with praise and taxpayers' cash, Shahbaz and his family were embezzling tens of millions of pounds of public money and laundering it in Britain. They are convinced that some of the allegedly stolen money came from DFID-funded aid projects," the report said.
The British daily claimed to have based its report on the interview of key witnesses held on remand in jail, including a UK citizen Aftab Mehmood consequent to a high-level probe ordered by Prime Minister Imran Khan. The paper had got access to the results of the high level probe.
In his interview, Aftab Mehmood claimed that he had laundered millions on behalf of Shahbaz's family from a nondescript office in Birmingham without attracting suspicion from Britain's financial regulators, who inspected his books regularly.
The legal documents allege that Shahbaz's son-in-law received about £1 million from a fund established to rebuild the lives of earthquake victims to which DFID gave £54 million from UK taxpayers.
Moreover, the investigators have also launched inquiries into alleged thefts from DFID-funded schemes to give poor women cash to lift them out of poverty and to provide healthcare for rural families.
The PML-N refuted the report and termed it baseless.
