Panama case Joint Investigation Team (JIT) head and prosecution witness Wajid Zia on Thursday said he did not come across any document during investigation which showed that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was the owner of Al-Azizia Steel Mills.
The statement came as former prime minister’s legal counsel Khawaja Harris Thursday started cross-examination of the prosecution witness in the Al-Azizia reference against Sharif family.
Zia, an additional director at the Federal Investigation Agency, headed the Panama case JIT which probed the Sharif family’s assets last year.
As per the bank statement, Nawaz’s son Hussain Nawaz sent him an amount of US$1.1 million as a ‘gift’ from July 5, 2010 to June 30, 2011. “It is true that the dollars sent to Nawaz were a gift from his son,” Zia remarked. Nawaz should have declared the amount in the wealth statement for 2010-2011, he added.
National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Prosecutor Wasiq Malik remarked that there is no need to compare the bank statement with the tax record, adding “our case is different.”
Zia, who is appearing before the court of accountability judge Muhammad Bashir, has already recorded his statement in both Avenfield and Al-Azizia references against the Sharif family.
The NAB has in total filed three references against the Sharif family in light of the Supreme Court’s orders in the Panama Papers case verdict of July 28.
The court originally had a deadline of six months which ended in mid-March but was extended for two months after the judge requested the apex court.
Later, on May 9, the trial court’s second plea for a deadline extension was approved by the Supreme Court which gave one more month to both sides to finish the corruption cases.
Published in Daily Times, June 1st 2018.
