Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar on Friday said he had written to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) with evidence of several telegraphic transfers (TTs) from Hill Metal Establishment (HME) in Saudi Arabia to PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz.
While addressing a press conference, Akbar also shared some documents which he said detailed the transfers from HME to the PML-N vice president.
At the start of the press conference, Akbar alleged that over 85 per cent of the declared profit of Hill Metal Establishment went to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, of which a share was “gifted” to his daughter Maryam.
Akbar recalled that Nawaz and his sons, Hussain Nawaz and Hassan Nawaz, had been accused in the Al-Azizia/Hill Metal Establishment reference, and that Nawaz had been given a seven-year sentence in the case.
The reference pertained to the Sharifs being unable to justify the source of funds provided to set up Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment (HME) in Saudi Arabia.
While addressing the press conference Friday, Akbar said that an important factor that was as yet unexplored in this reference was that payments were made to Maryam by HME. He said that a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the case had identified some payments made to Maryam, but the details of those had not been available earlier.
“Now they are available,” he said, as he began to share documents which allegedly showed TTs from HME to Maryam’s accounts.
He said that these included the ‘Form R’, in which the beneficiary takes ownership that the money being transferred is in their knowledge and is coming for a specified purpose.
The special assistant to the premier said that this included a TT of Rs14 million to Maryam’s MCB account in 2008, in which the purpose specified was ‘investment’; another TT for Rs19 million and one more in 2016 of Rs9.9 million from HME to her Habib Bank account in the bank’s Jati Umrah Sharif Education City branch.
After disclosing details of the transfers, Akbar said he had written to NAB and attached the ‘evidence’ to it. Akbar said NAB may not have seen this “additional documentary evidence” before, adding that the authority could determine if there was a need for further investigation or probe into the matter.
“Any next step has to be taken by NAB, [we] have shared evidence with them and hope that they will further investigate it,” he said.
