Daily Times

LAHORE: Another key candidate of Nawaz League from Lahore, Khawaja Hassan, on Monday found himself in hot-waters as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has summoned him in Saaf Pani Company scam.

Khawaja Hassan is one of the closest aides of ex-CM Shehbaz Sharif and is going to contest upcoming general elections for national assembly’s constituency NA-130 (Lahore-VIII) against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Shafqat Mehmood Khan.

According to the sources in NAB, the summon to appear before the investigating officer tomorrow on June 20 is served to him while the notice of appearance of Shehbaz Sharif after a week, on June 24, in the same scheme (Saaf Pani) has already been sent at his residential address.

The NAB sources confirmed to Daily Times that the bureau had collected some sufficient proofs of interference of Khawaja Hassan in the Saaf Pani Scheme’s contracts to his blue-eyed persons, violating the merit as a supervisor of it.

Sources further told this scribe that the bureau had also collected some imported official record of Khawaja Hassan’s decisions and orders to dispose of the garbage as a supervisor of the Scheme he made as well. The sources said, he (Khawaja Hassan) also facilitated his favorite companies to provide contracts of the scheme as per the record obtained by the NAB.

It is worth mentioning that Khawaja Hassan is being observed as a strong candidate to face PTI candidate Shafqat Mehmood but now, after NAB’s summons, a worry among the bigwigs of Nawaz League is being observed.

Pertinent to mention here that Shehbaz Sharif, as a former chief minister of Punjab, did not appear before the NAB in the last hearing and his representative admitted written answers of the questionnaire before the bureau.

Earlier, scam of Rs56 billion in 56 companies of Saaf Pani Scheme run by the Punjab government was unearth in the media reports.