LAHORE: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s son Hamza Shahbaz did not appear before the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday in the Punjab Saaf Pani Company (PSPC) scam.

“Hamza did not appear before a three-member combined investigation team of NAB. However, his lawyer visited the NAB office and submitted the reply in connection with the CIT questionnaire,” a source told Dawn.

The NAB had grilled Hamza on his previous appearance on Friday last questioning his alleged role in awarding of certain contracts and making appointments despite not being a member of the board of directors of the PSPC.

The NAB investigation against Hamza was also being conducted in the light of findings from the recently held five former top officials of the PSPC.

Earlier, Hamza said he was not a member of the BoD of the company and he had attended only five meetings of the board. He had declared that he would appear before NAB if re-summoned. However, he did not give any reason to skip the NAB appearance.

Hamza’s brother-in-law Imran Ali Yousaf is also being investigated by the bureau for renting out a floor of his plaza in Gulberg to the company which he had already sold to a suspect (Ikram Naveed) in the Punjab Power Development Company (PPDC) corruption case.

Yousaf, who is facing two corruption inquiries in NAB, skipped third consecutive appearance before the bureau this week as he had left the country.

“In spite of giving an undertaking to NAB to appear before a combined investigation team at the Lahore office, Mr Yousaf left for London and skipped the third consecutive appearance before it on Monday last. This shows that Mr Yousaf is deliberately avoiding joining the NAB investigation,” said the source.

AMOUNT RECOVERED: The bureau has recovered Rs7.1 million from the suspects involved in fabricating of bogus plots files of Mustafa Town, Lahore.

The NAB handed over on Thursday two cheques amounting to Rs7.11m of recovered money to officials of the departments concerned.

According to NAB, during the course of investigation, eight plot files were detected as bogus where [bogus] exemptions had been granted by LDA’s officials. Moreover, bogus exemption files were prepared and dated back over which all fees were deducted to make files seem genuine. It said it arrested six officials of LDA who finally opted for plea bargain (PB) and recovery of looted money worth millions of rupees was under way.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2018