ISLAMABAD, May 20: The National Accountability Bureau is considering summoning PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif in a case being taken up by the bureau on the complaint of Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

“Of course they can be summoned in the case being investigated by NAB,” the bureau’s spokesman, Zafar Iqbal, told Dawn on Sunday.

NAB sources said the bureau had started an inquiry and called investigators from NAB’s Rawalpindi, Peshawar and other offices to investigate major cases, including cases of Sharif brothers.

They said the case of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif was being investigated directly by NAB’s headquarters and not by NAB’s Punjab office.

When contacted, PML-N leader Pervez Rashid said that NAB had so far not informed his party that it intended to summon Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif.

“If we receive any such notice, first we will look into it and then decide what to do,” he said.

He said the cases being probed by NAB had already been investigated three times in the past — first by the PPP government in 1988, then again by the PPP government in 1993 and the third time by former president Gen Pervez Musharraf.

The ruling PPP and its leader Rehman Malik, he said, would be disappointed because the Lahore High Court had given its verdict on these cases in favour of the PML-N in 1999.