LAHORE: An accountability court was told on Saturday that proclamations to declare Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif’s daughter Rabia and son-in-law Imran Ali Yousaf absconders in the Punjab Saaf Pani Company’s reference had been pasted at the given addresses of the suspects.

The court had ordered the prosecution to initiate the process to declare the duo absconders after they failed to join the proceedings of the reference against them. They had already been declared absconders in another reference of the money laundering pending against the family of Shehbaz.

The prime suspects in the reference include Saaf Pani Company’s former chairman Raja Qamarul Islam, also a former MPA of PML-N, and former chief executive officer Waseem Ajmal.

The NAB alleged that Mr Islam, being chairman of the company, was involved in awarding contracts of 84 water filtration plants at higher prices. It said the suspect got the contracts of 102 plants approved from the company’s board of directors and committed forgery in the documents.

The bureau accused Mr Ajmal of violating procurement rules and permitting the installation of the water plants in Dunyapur tehsil beyond the scope of the project.

Both Islam and Ajmal were arrested by the NAB in June 2018 and were later released on bail granted by the Lahore High Court on Jan 30, 2019.

Islam said the NAB had arrested him a day after he was awarded ticket by the PML-N for 2018 general election against former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the disgruntled leader of the party, from NA-59, Rawalpindi.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2021