ISLAMABAD: The accountability court on Wednesday put over 100 questions to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law retired Captain Mohammad Safdar regarding Avenfield properties.

Judge Mohammad Bashir handed over the questionnaire to the counsel for the Sharif family with a directive that the court would record their testimony on Friday.

The court asked multiple questions about four apartments in Park Lane, Avenfield, London. The questions related to money trail, sale proceed of Gulf Steel Mills (GSM), shares of Ahli Steel Mills, investment with Qatari royals, clearance of GSM’s liabilities, litigation with Al-Tawfeek Investment and offshore companies Nielson and Nescoll.

Court to record testimony of Nawaz, Maryam and Safdar tomorrow

With regard to the questions for Maryam, the court asked about trust deeds pertaining to the offshore companies and what the witnesses, including forensic expert Robert William Radley and solicitor Akhtar Riaz Raja, had testified against her.

The court offered the accused to bring anything on record to contradict the statements of prosecution witnesses and produce any witness in their defence.

Court proceedings

Head of the Panamagate Joint Investigation Team (JIT) Wajid Zia was briefly cross-examined by lead defence counsel Khawaja Haris in the Al-Azizia/Hill Metal Establishment (HME) reference.

Mr Zia said the information about foreign remittances from Hussain Nawaz to his father had been provided by the latter when he appeared before the JIT for recording his statement. Responding to the question, he said the remittances Mr Sharif had received either from HME Jeddah or Hussain were mentioned in his income and wealth tax returns.

Mr Zia admitted that the JIT had not attached the entire banking record with its report, though it obtained full record of all transactions from private banks out of which a selected portion was appended to the JIT report.

Khawaja Haris pointed out discrepancies in HME’s inflow chart prepared by the JIT in which all transactions from the company and Hussain Nawaz were mentioned. He said some amounts were mentioned in income and wealth tax statements for the financial year 2013-14, but not in the inflow chart.

The JIT head said he had to verify these amounts from other documents.

The court adjourned the proceedings in the Al-Azizia reference till May 21.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2018