Fake accounts: FIA, NAB find leads suggesting Sharif siphoned Rs25b

ISLAMABAD: Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan revealed on Wednesday the alleged graft through a network of forged bank accounts run by former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif which the agencies say is to the tune of Rs25 billion graft.

ARY News program Power Play claimed investigation agencies have successfully busted the networks perpetrated by the Sharif family to siphon off money including collecting evidence in the TT scandal, in its Wednesday episode.

READ: Details of Shehbaz Sharif’s assets, money laundering surface

It was reported that just like in the infamous Omni case, relating former president Asif Ali Zardari, Sharif’s frontmen were poor people whose particulars and titles were used without their knowledge to maintain the swindle.

The program noted that while NAB already prosecutes in Sharif’s Rs7 billion corruption case, the new details draw an even notorious volume of a whopping Rs25 billion fraud.

FIA has reportedly learned of the accounts opened illegally, in the name of individuals belonging to lower-income class people, in 2008 to 2018 span.

The details suggest that the money that landed into such accounts came from kickbacks, extortion, and tax evasion and were channeled to be laundered.

These leads FIA claims as substantial evidence to incriminate Sharif, were probed while sugar commission investigations were conducted.

Evidence and leads were contracted from investigations in Ramzan and Al-Arabia sugar mills, FIA was reported to have claimed.