Shehbaz Sharif acquitted in Ashiana housing fraud case

Lahore:Former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and 10 others were acquitted by an accountability court in Lahore in the Ashiana-e-Iqbal housing project case, reported on Saturday.

Acting federal minister Ahad Cheema and Fawad Hassan Fawad were among the defendants acquitted by the court. On November 2, Accountability Court Judge Malik Ali Zulkarnain Awan reserved his judgment after closing arguments by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) lawyers and prosecutors on the acquittal plea. The not guilty motion asserted that all prosecution witnesses and approvers recanted their statements and that the references suggested there was no likelihood of conviction.

The plaintiffs asked the court to accept their application and acquit them of the charges. In its report submitted in May, NAB told the court it had found no evidence of financial corruption or abuse of power by Shehbaz Sharif. The report said allegations of abuse of power and corruption against the former prime minister were not substantiated by the 1999 National Responsibility Ordinance.

In 2018, NAB alleged that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chairman and other defendants had awarded contracts to construction companies without going through the bidding process, causing huge financial losses to the national exchequer. had filed a lawsuit. Sharif was arrested in connection with the incident on October 5, 2018, while appearing before the Audit Office on a separate matter, and Cheema was taken into custody on February 21, 2018.

The two were later released on bail. Earlier, Kamran Kiyani, brother of former army chief Ashfaque Parvez Kiyani, and Nadeem Zia of Paragon City were acquitted by a court citing “lack of evidence”. NAB alleged that Cheema received illegal benefits from the company’s owners as compensation for awarding housing contracts to Bismillah Engineering, a representative company of Paragon City Developers.