LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday directed the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to ensure payment of recovered money to two affectees of country’s biggest financial and parallel banking system scam of Double Shah.

Sahibzada Nasir Ali and Nisar Ahmad stated in their petition that the NAB returned them Rs600,000 out of their approved claim of Rs10.1 million invested in Sibtul Hassan Gillani alias Double Shah, who died last month.

They asked the court to order the bureau to return full claim of the amount from the money recovered from Double Shah and his agents.

A recovery officer of the NAB told the bench that the process of retuning investments to affectees of the scam was still in progress.

He said the auction of some of the properties owned by Shah and his agents was stayed by different courts that hampered the process of recovering looted money from the fraudsters.

The court directed the officer to return the approved claim of the petitioners within a month and submit compliance report to the court.

Double Shah was initially arrested by the Ghakkhar police of Gujranwala in a robbery case in 2007. Later, he was handed over to NAB which prosecuted him in a financial scam of Rs2 billion involving public at large.

He was sentenced to 14 years in jail and released in 2014 following a plea bargain with the NAB.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2015