ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is likely to file a supplementary reference in the Avenfiled Apartments’ case against the Sharif family early January next year.
The NAB team that visited the United Kingdom this month might not have returned with any substantial evidence but they had recorded the statements of two important witnesses in London and based on those statements, a supplementary reference is likely to be filed in the first half of January 2018, well-placed sources said.
A team of the NAB reached London on December 12 to meet the Home Office officials in relation to the Avenfield flats owned by Hasan and Hussain Nawaz and returned on December 19. The sources said that the NAB team had recorded the statement of one, Akhtar Raja of Quist Law Firm, a loss-making law firm in the UK. Raja happens to be cousin of JIT’s head Wajid Zia who hired him to work for the JIT in the UK. Raja was paid a hefty amount by the JIT. The sources said that Akhtar Raja had endorsed what the JIT had attributed to him.
Secondly, NAB investigators have also taken the statement of Robert W Radley of Radley Forensic Document Laboratory as he was hired by the JIT to examine the documents presented by the Sharif family regarding the Avenfiled Apartments, the sources added. Radley had identified that the type of font used in the trust deed declarations was ‘Calibri’. However, the font was not commercially available before Jan 31, 2007 and as such, neither of the documents is correctly dated and appear to have been created at some later point in time. The sources said that Radley too has endorsed what he had given in writing to the JIT regarding the Calibri font controversy.
