ISLAMABAD: In a case pertaining to the purchase of a luxury car from the Toshakhana (state gift repository), Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and a former prime minister, received a clean sheet on Wednesday from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
The accountability court received a report from the watchdog that upheld the court’s jurisdiction to clear the former premier in the Toshakhana case.
The report, which was turned in today, said that the Supreme Court had ordered an investigation into a purportedly fictitious account linked to Nawaz. It further said that the leader of the PML-N did not use money from the purported account to purchase the car that was stolen from the Toshakhana.
The car was given back to the Toshakhana in 1997, and when Nawaz Sharif purchased it in 2008, it was no longer in the Toshakhana’s possession, according to the nation’s graft-buster report.
The nation’s accountability watchdog claimed in a March 2020 reference that regulations were broken while Yusuf Raza Gilani was prime minister to enable former president Asif Ali Zardari and former premier Nawaz to obtain expensive cars from the state’s gift registry.
It said that Gilani dishonestly eased the government’s gift acceptance procedure in 2007, so facilitating Zardari and Nawaz in this regard.
The protocol stated that automobiles that foreign dignitaries sent as gifts could not be purchased by the receivers and might instead be donated to the cabinet division’s central pool.
Due to his persistent non-appearance in the Toshakhana case, the accountability court declared the supreme leader of the PML-N to be an absconder in October 2020 and ordered the forfeiture of his belongings.
Zardari and Nawaz kept the cars “against a nominal payment of 15% of their total value” by using “dishonest and illegal means for their personal benefit and interest,” according to the anti-corruption committee.
