Hamza Shehbaz Sharif, a former chief minister of Punjab, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif were cleared on charges related to money laundering on Wednesday by the Special Central Court.
Judge Ijaz Awan of the Special Central Court read the reserved decision.
FIA has arrested Shehbaz Sharif, along with his sons Hamza and Sulaiman, in November 2020 for violating Sections 419, 420, 468, 471, 34, and 109 of the Anti-Corruption Act and Section 3/4 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Sulaiman Shehbaz was listed as a fugitive and is now in the UK.
In accordance with Sections 5 (2) and 5 (3) (criminal misbehaviour) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 14 other people were also identified in this FIR. Shahbaz Sharif is charged with assisting his sons Sulaiman and Hamza Shahbaz in amassing fortune from their unidentified sources of income.
Days was the primary defendant when the FIA filed a Rs 16 billion money laundering challan at the banking court on December 13, 2021, against Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, and other defendants.
There are more than 4,000 pages in the seven-volume challan that the FIA provided, along with a list of 100 witnesses who are allegedly going to testify against the accused.
According to the challan, the investigating team located 28 benami bank accounts opened between 2008 and 2018 in the names of employees of the Shahbaz Sharif family, including clerks at several banks in Lahore and Chiniot.
In 28 benami accounts, there were more than 17,000 credit transactions totaling Rs 16 billion, according to the FIA, and a significant quantity of money was hidden in these accounts, which have nothing to do with the sugar industry. It was a personal offer made to Shahbaz Sharif.
The challan said that Shehbaz Sharif (Chief Minister of Punjab 1998) had previously organised foreign remittances (false TT) to a Bahraini woman named Sadiqa Syed and was actively implicated in money laundering involving more than $5 million. With the assistance of the then-Federal Minister Ishaq Dar, the name was chosen.
Shehbaz Sharif, Hamza Shehbaz, and Sulaiman Shehbaz are named as the primary defendants in this challan, and 14 benami account holders and 6 facilitators are named as co-defendants on the grounds of the crime of aiding and abetting. Shehbaz Sharif and Hamza Shehbaz both held official jobs from 2008 to 2018, according to the challan.
