LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to two approvers in money laundering case against family of Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif.

A division bench comprising Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Sardar Ahmad Naeem allowed the bail pleas directing the petitioners to deposit surety bonds of Rs1 million each.

Aftab Mahmood and Shahid Rafiq — the approvers — had filed the petitions through senior lawyer Kazim Ali Malik pleading that they were no more required by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

The petitioners said they had already recorded their statements before the NAB chairman and the judicial magistrate concerned.

In his statement, Mahmood had claimed to have laundered millions of dollars during the period from 2008 to 2009 through at least 24 Telegraph Transfers (TT) to Leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly Hamza Shahbaz, his brother Suleman Shahbaz, his mother Nusrat Shahbaz and sister Rabia Imran. He confessed to have laundered over $2.4 million for the family of Shahbaz Sharif.

He said all the money was transferred through his UK-based currency exchange company namely Usman International to the members of the Shahbaz’s family. He said the TTs were used to be sent with fake identifies.

He claimed that he managed transfer of huge money to the Sharif family from different companies of the United Kingdom and banks including Barclays and HSBC.

Rafiq, the other approver, had claimed that he used to pick cash from the office of Suleman to send it abroad and to bring it back to country finally through foreign TTs. He said the whole process had been carried out to whiten the black money.

Rafiq said he had been running franchises of two currency exchange companies — Zarco and AAA.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2019