Pakistan
Government to start fresh probe into Hudaibiya Paper Mills case
Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhary Fawad Hussain Monday, said that the government has decided to start a fresh investigation of the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case.
Fawad Chaudhry took to Twitter and said that the legal team gave a detailed briefing to Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan on Monday regarding the cases of PML-N president Mian Shehbaz Sharif.
He further said that the government decided that the case of Hudaibiya Paper Mills needed a fresh investigation and in this regard, the concerned agencies are being asked to reopen the investigation.
In this regard, Fawad Chaudhry said that instructions are being given to the concerned agencies to reopen the investigation of the case. Hudaibiya’s case is the most important source of corruption in the Sharif family. In this case, Shahbaz Sharif and Nawaz Sharif are the main accused.
Hudaibiya Case Background:
The Hudaibiya Papers Mills reference was filed by the NAB during the rule of former President Pervez Musharraf based on a statement taken from former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on April 25, 2000, in which he paid Rs 10 million to the Sharif family through fake accounts. He had confessed to alleged money laundering of about 48 4.8 million
Ishaq Dar later retracted his statement, saying he had been pressured into doing so.
A Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court had in October 2011 restrained the NAB from taking further action on the reference, after which the Lahore High Court in 2014 dismissed the reference and said in its order that the NAB had insufficient evidence against the accused.
Apart from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Hamza Shahbaz, Abbas Sharif, Shamim Akhtar, Sabiha Shahbaz, Maryam Nawaz, and Capt (retd) Safdar are the parties in this reference while Ishaq Dar was included as a forgiving witness.
In light of the Panama case, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court’s decision in the Hudaibiya Papers Mills case, which was rejected.
The NAB later filed a petition seeking review of the Supreme Court’s decision, which was rejected by the High Court on October 29, 2018, after a hearing.