NAB has concrete evidence of money laundering: Justice retd Javed Iqbal

ISLAMABAD: Chairman NAB Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Sunday said that the accountability watchdog has evidence of money laundering worth billions from the country, ARY NEWS reported.

Speaking during an event, the chairman NAB blamed money laundering for being behind poverty and lack of education and health facilities in the country.

He said that the investigation into white-collar crimes and street crimes are different from each other and they have concrete evidence against the accused in money laundering cases.

While citing how NAB recovered looted money, he said that people were deprived of their hard-earned money in the Modarba scandal and after an investigation into it by the NAB, Rs 10 billion was recovered and the accused, Mufti Ehsan and his accomplices were arrested.

Justice retd Javed Iqbal further said that the founder of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah has openly declared bribery and nepotism as the root cause of the issues in the country.

It is pertinent to mention here that in a recent investigation into assets beyond means case against PML-N leader Khawaja Asif has revealed that he owns “benami” shares in a firm.

Sources told ARY News that the former foreign minister, who is under the NAB custody on a 14-day physical remand, had got the firm registered in the name of his employee Tariq Mir, who owns 50 per cent shares in it while the remainder are owned by Musrat Khawaja.

They said millions of rupees worth of transactions were made into Tariq’s bank account over nine years.

A cumulative sum of Rs507 million was deposited into the firm’s account between 2009 and 2018, the sources said, adding the company is involved in the rice export business.