ISLAMABAD: A three-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) will hear the appeal filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against the Lahore High Court’s decision to quash the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case against the Sharif family.
The bench, headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and comprising Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel will take up the case on Nov 13.
The NAB prosecutor general has dispatched notices to the parties concerned in this regard.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had on Sept 20 filed an appeal in the SC against the decision of the Lahore High Court (LHC) quashing the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case against the Sharif family.
The petition had named ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Shehbaz’s son and MNA Hamza Shehbaz, among other family members, as respondents.
The NAB had pleaded the SC to dismiss the LHC’s decision to quash the case and order a reinvestigation into the scam as per the new evidence which surfaced in the Panama Papers case Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report.
NAB had assured the apex court that it would be filing the appeal in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case during the hearing of Awami Muslim League (AML) leader Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed’s petition in the court seeking re-opening of the case.
Earlier, Rasheed, one of three petitioners in the Panama Papers case, had moved the SC against NAB, accusing the anti-graft watchdog of failing to file an appeal in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case in accordance with the SC’s Panama Papers verdict.
The Joint Investigating Team (JIT) formed to probe allegations against the Sharif family in the Panama Papers case had recommended the reopening of the Hudaibiya Paper Mills reference. In its July 28 verdict in the Panama Papers case, the SC asked NAB to reopen the case as it filed other corruption references against the Sharif family and Ishaq Dar. The apex court had also criticised NAB for not challenging the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) decision to quash the case.
The Hudaibiya Paper Mills money laundering reference was initiated on the basis of a confessional statement of Ishaq Dar on April 25, 2000, in which he had admitted to his role in laundering money to the tune of $14.86 million on behalf of the Sharifs through fictitious accounts. The witness was, however, pardoned by the then NAB chairman.
