Nawaz Sharif meets Shehbaz at NAB's Lahore office

LAHORE: Ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif along with other members of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz’s Sharif family on Sunday visited the remanded opposition leader at the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) Lahore office.

Shehbaz’s wife Nusrat, and his sons Hamza and Salman were present during the meeting which lasted over an hour. Nawaz and Shehbaz reportedly discussed several issues including the current political situation and the way forward.

The meeting was arranged on the approval of NAB Director General Irfan Mangi at the bureau’s Lahore office. Shehbaz’s legal team had filed a request to allow Nawaz Sharif to meet his brother.

Shehbaz Sharif was arrested by NAB on Friday in the multi-billion Ashiana housing society case. He was served several summons and was taken into custody when he appeared to record his statement. He was given a ten day physical remand on Saturday after he appeared before an Anti-Terrorism Court.

Shahbaz’s blue-eyed officers, former Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Director General Ahad Cheema and former principal secretary to the prime minister Fawad Hasan Fawad, are already in NAB custody in the Ashiana housing case.

Fawad in his statement before NAB in August claimed that he had awarded a contract to a “favourite firm” in the Ashiana housing project on Shahbaz’s behest. The accused bureaucrat is also being probed by NAB for possession of assets beyond known sources of income.

According to NAB, the contract for the housing scheme was won by a construction company named Chaudhry Latif and Sons but Shehbaz Sharif and his aides awarded the contract to Lahore Casa Developers, a proxy group of Paragon City which is said to be owned by former Railways Minister Saad Rafique.