RAWALPINDI, July 13: The families of former prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin declared the sources of their income before the Control of Narcotics Substances (CNS) court hearing the ephedrine case.

According to the details of the assets, total wealth of the wife of former premier, Fauzia Gilani, and their sons Ali Musa and Abdul Qadir is a paltry Rs1.5 million.

The value of moveable and immovable property owned by Mr Shahabuddin and his family is about Rs30m.

The court had issued notices to them on Jan 29 while hearing an application of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) seeking permanent freezing of the assets and bank accounts.

According to the law, the ANF can only temporarily freeze assets of an accused, which it did in June 2012, but to permanently freeze them it needed a directive from the CNS court.

The ANF filed an application in the CNS court and wrote letters to revenue offices and banks last year to temporarily freeze the assets of the accused.

When CNS Judge Arshad Mehmood Tabassum resumed the hearing, Advocate Faisal Hussain Chaudhry, counsel for the Gilani family, submitted the details of the bank accounts of his clients.

According to the reply, Ali Musa owns Rs1,056,000 in Standard Chartered Bank — which he had received as gifts on his marriage in November 2011. Ali Qadir has a bank balance of Rs444,000.

The reply said the amount was the monthly salary he had received as a member of the Punjab Assembly and then the National Assembly.

Fauzia Gilani has Rs27,000 in Faysal Bank but her bank account has not been operated since 2008, much before the ephedrine case surfaced in late 2010.

The counsel said Ali Musa was not nominated in the FIR of the ephedrine case registered in October 2011.

He said the ANF had implicated him in the case on a later stage and frozen his property without thoroughly investigating his source of income.

Advocate Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, counsel for Mr Shahabuddin, submitted the reply of his client and his family.

The ANF in June last year froze the 22 bank accounts of the former minister, his son and two daughters.

The counsel said his client owns inherited land in Rahim Yar Khan. He said agriculture was the only source of income of Makhdoom Shahabuddin and his family and the total worth of his assets was not more than Rs30m.

The lawyer said his client had ordered the investigation into illegal allocation of ephedrine to private pharmaceutical companies but the ANF had dragged him into the controversy.

He said the ANF issued arrest warrants for Makhdoom Shahabuddin when he was likely to become the prime minister as a candidate of the PPP and its coalition partners.

The court issued final notices to other accused, including the owners of pharmaceutical companies Berlix and Danas, for submitting details of their assets by July 30.

Because of repeated absence of accused Khushnood Akhtar Lashari, former principal secretary to Mr Gilani, the court decided to hold ex parte proceedings for permanent seizure of his property.