RAWALPINDI: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday challenged an accountability court’s decision which cleared Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his relatives in two corruption references.
The decision was challenged in the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench, with NAB requesting that the court to reopen the cases.
On September 19, accountability judge Justice Anwar Ahmed rejected a NAB application which sought the revival of the decade-old corruption references pertaining to Hudaibia Paper Mills and Raiwind assets.
On Friday, NAB formally submitted an application before LHC challenging the verdict. The court will take up the case after Eid.
The prime minister and his wife Kulsoom Nawaz, his brother, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, their deceased father Mian Muhammad Sharif, their mother Shamim Akhtar, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Hamza Shahbaz, Hussain Nawaz, the late Mian Abbas Sharif, Sabiha Abbas, Maryam Nawaz and Hudaibia Paper Mills company secretary Syed Ajmal Sibtain were named in the reference.
On April 4, 2001, while the Sharifs were in exile in Saudi Arabia, the proceedings of the two references were adjourned indefinitely.
NAB filed an application to revive the references in 2011, but the request was turned down by the LHC in May this year.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 4th, 2014.