ISLAMABAD - Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Accountability Shahzad Akbar on Saturday said the government had nothing to do with the action being taken by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against the corrupt elements.
NAB, he said, was taking action against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hamza Shehbaz for his corrupt practices on its own. Had the government behind it, the opposition leader would have been arrested in a few minutes, he said talking to a private news channel.
He said Hamza should tell the nation that who were Manzoor Ahmad and Mahboob Ali and why they had remitted hundreds of thousands of dollars to him. NAB had all the documentary evidence in that regard. Complete money trail was present as the amounts were transferred through swift messages (among banks), depicting the relation of the sender with the receiver.
Shahzad Akbar alleged that the PML-N leaders were expert at using the institutions for their own petty objectives, citing the Model Town incident, in which some 16 persons, including women, were killed by the police in 2014. He said NAB had the authority to arrest anyone, including Hamza, if it had proofs of their involvement in corruption or money laundering.
The SAPM said NAB had also issued notices to Shehbaz Sharif and his other son Salman Shehbaz, but they did not join their investigation. Similarly, Hamza had also not heeded to the notices issued to him for questioning about having assets beyond sources of income.
He said Salman Shehbaz had fled abroad when the first notice was issued to him. Were the corruption charges against him baseless he should have come back to country to prove his innocence, he added.
Shahzad said Hamza had set a bad example by not tendering arrest and instead getting temporary bail from the court. He had already been handed over a questionnaire, which he had not responded as yet.
He said whenever NAB took action against the corrupt, they started making hue and cry, besides blaming the government. To a question, he said the government had establish an asset recovery unit, which was not a mentally torture cell. The unit collected proofs of corruption and pursue the cases against the corrupt in foreign countries who had stashed looted money there, he remarked.
He said he had nothing do with NAB and he was ready for forensic audit of the cell headed by him.