The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was given a 15-day remand of Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz on Wednesday.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice-president was presented before an accountability court amid tight security.
Hamza has been under NAB investigation in Ramzan Sugar Mills, Saaf Paani project and assets beyond known means of income.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the NAB prosecutor sought Hamza’s physical remand, claiming he had failed to explain the money transfers to foreign countries during its investigation.
In order to probe the suspicious transactions, NAB’s prosecutor said, Hamza’s remand was needed.
NAB claims to have found evidence of money laundering on a massive scale through which Hamza and his family allegedly accumulated assets in the United Kingdom.
According to sources privy to NAB’s probe, the illegally accumulated assets are worth Rs 85 billion to Rs 100 billion and were bought during Shehbaz Sharif’s tenure as the chief minister of Punjab.
NAB claims to have found that Hamza’s declared assets in 2003 were worth less than Rs 20 million, which increased by almost 2,000% to over Rs 410 million after his father became the chief minister.
Similarly, his younger brother Suleman Shehbaz’s personal wealth increased 8,500 times and he now owns assets worth more than Rs 3 billion.
The investigation started when NAB discovered “the huge volume of suspicious cash transactions” in the bank accounts of Shehbaz, Hamza, Suleman and other family members.
The Financial Monitoring Unit of NAB forwarded an application to the bureau’s chairman on January 12, 2018 to investigate the transactions.
An inquiry was allowed in October 2018 and later its status was turned into an investigation.
On April 3 this year, NAB arrested two suspects, Qasim Qayyum and Fazal Dad Abbasi, after finding evidence against them of their involvement in money laundering and other corrupt practices.
During the course of the investigation, it was found that Qayyum was running an illegal foreign exchange business at Sadiq Plaza on The Mall and Ali Tower, MM Alam Road between 2005 and 2018.
He collected cash from Suleman’s office in Model Town, Lahore. He then arranged fictitious foreign remittances to the bank accounts of Shehbaz, Hamza, Suleman and other members of the family. He used the identity cards of his employees or others, showing them as the source of these remittances.
