Daily Times

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hamza Shahbaz on Friday filed a petition for bail in the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan. The bail petition was filed in the money laundering case and assets beyond means of income case being pursued against the politican.

Advocates Amjad Pervez and Azam Nazeer Tarrar filed the petition for bail in the Lahore registry of the apex court on Friday morning. Top National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officials, including NAB chief Javed Iqbal and a director-general at the bureau, have been named in the petition.

On June 11 last year, the National Accountability Bureau had arrested Hamza after the Lahore High Court (LHC) rejected his interim bail in the Ramzan Sugar Mills and money laundering cases.

According to the accountability watchdog, the PML-N leader made five companies from 2006 to 2009 and did a business of more than Rs19billion. An accountability court later granted Shahbaz’s physical remand in the cases being pursued against him.

On September 4, the accountability court sent Hamza to Lahore’s Camp Jail on judicial remand after rejecting NAB’s appeal seeking an extension in his remand. Hearings into his case were later marred due to a strike by lawyers.

The LHC had in February accepted a bail plea filed by Hamza Shahbaz in the Ramzan Sugar Mills case. A two-member bench of the LHC, headed by Justice Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi, conducted a hearing into the Ramzan Sugar Mills case on February 6 this year.

Hamza Shahbaz had been indicted in the sugar mills case along with his father, former Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on April 9 last year. On February 11, LHC turned down another bail petition filed by Hamza Shahbaz in relation to a money laundering and assets beyond means case.

While hearing the case, the court remarked that Hamza had failed to give satisfactory answers regarding sources of income. During the hearing, the petitioner’s counsel stated that money laundering laws do not apply to Hamza Shahbaz as they were introduced after he allegedly committed crime.