NAB grills Foreign Office officials in vehicle misuse case involving Nawaz

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has made senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs part of its probe into a case against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif over alleged personal use of bulletproof vehicles imported for the SAARC summit 2016, ARY News reported on Monday.

Sources relayed eight officials of the Foreign Office were subjected to questioning by a NAB team in the case.

Some of the officials who were interrogated were posted at Pakistan’s missions abroad.

The sources said those questioned by the bureau included Naeem Cheema, Iftikhar Aziz, Sahibzada Ahmed Khan, Salman Sharif, Sardar Adnan Rasheed, Waseem Shehzad and Shujaat Rathore.

They said the anti-corruption watchdog might summon former foreign secretary Azaz Chaudhry in connection with investigation into the case.

Previously, a NAB team had recorded the statement of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in the case inside jail.

According to NAB, 34 bulletproof vehicles were procured from Germany for the guest of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) conference. The vehicles were bought without paying import duty, it added.

However, the corruption watchdog said 20 vehicles remained in the personal use of Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz. It said it had already recorded the statement of former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, ex-principal secretary to prime minister Fawad Hassan Fawad and other officials.