LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday extended pre-arrest bail of Eden Housing Scheme owner Dr Muhammad Amjad till Aug 12 and ordered him to deposit Rs1 billion with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) within four weeks.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan observed if the petitioner wanted to get his bail extended, he needed to furnish payments to the NAB for further disbursement among the affectees of the housing scam.

The bench also directed the NAB to put the properties of the petitioner on sale to compensate the affectees.

Previously, the bench had suspended, in a one-time relief, the red warrants issued against Dr Amjad and his family members and also suspended the effect of being placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) to enable them to return to Pakistan from Canada.

Dr Amjad is father in-law of the daughter of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

An accountability court had issued non-bailable arrest warrants of Dr Amjad, his sons Murtaza, who is son-in-law of former chief justice Chaudhry, and Mustafa and wife Anjum in the housing scheme case.

The court had also ordered the NAB to confiscate the properties owned by the absconding suspects.

According to the NAB, there are over 11,000 affectees of the housing scam unearthed in 2013.

The suspects had collected Rs18.9bn from the public through fraud and fled the country.

In September 2018, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had arrested Murtaza in Dubai. However, he was set at liberty owing to unavailability of sufficient evidence against him. The properties owned by Eden were worth Rs22bn.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2021