Recording her statement in the Avenfield Properties reference on Friday, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Maryam Nawaz said on Friday that the flats in London were the property of her brother Hussain Nawaz, adding that he was also the beneficial owner of Nielsen and Nescoll, the offshore firm which held the properties.
Further, she said that the trust deeds related to the properties were original but the Joint Investigation Team had deliberately falsified it to implicate her and her husband in the case.
Maryam endorsed her brother Hussain Nawaz’s interview to a private television channel about the ownership of the properties.
Regarding the forensic report compiled by forensic expert Robert Radley, that had generated a lot of debate in the country on alleged forgery because of the use of Calibiri font – not commercially available at the time the report was prepared – Maryam said, “During his cross-examination, Radley admitted that there was a pre-release of Window Vista Beta-1 version, which was available in April 2005, with subsequent versions in September and October 2005.”
She said that the JIT had ‘approached a so-called IT expert with ill-intent,” adding that Radley was hired through JIT head Wajid Zia’s cousin. “We were never informed why the services of Radley were not taken through the Foreign Office,” the PML-N leader said.
She maintained that the purpose behind the entire exercise was to implicate her and her husband in the case. “This report was prepared on the basis of a scanned copy which is unacceptable,” she said. Radley’s firm, Radley Forensic Document Laboratory, had been hired by the JIT to examine the documents presented by the Sharif family regarding Avenfiled apartments.
Radley identified that the font used in the trust deed was not commercially available before Jan 31, 2007, and concluded that the documents were not correctly dated and they appeared to have been created at some later point in time.
The Avenfield reference, pertaining to the Sharif family’s London properties, is among the three references filed against the family by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) last year on the Supreme Court’s directives. During the hearing on Thursday, Maryam recorded her statement in 46 of the 128 questions asked by the accountability court. She maintained that the JIT report was irrelevant to the case, since it was an investigative document, which was unacceptable as evidence.
Other references filed against the family pertain to the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment, offshore companies including Flagship Investment Ltd. Nawaz and sons Hussain and Hasan are accused in all three references whereas his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Safdar are accused in the Avenfield reference only.
Published in Daily Times, May 26th 2018.
