Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Thursday said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had not provided any new vital information during his appearance before the joint investigation team (JIT) probing money laundering allegations against the Sharif family.

He said the speech delivered by Sharif after his appearance before the JIT was old since it had already been read earlier. “They have not provided anything new… any evidence to the JIT,” Khan said.

The PTI chairman said the Sharifs’ only defence in the investigation was the letter from Qatari prince Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani. “Since the Qatari [prince] has refused to appear [before the court]… they have nothing left to explain how money was transferred from here to purchase the palaces in London.”

Khan said it was ‘most shameful’ that the prime minister was portraying the probe as some sort of a ‘conspiracy’ against his family. He said Sharif had suggested that the army and judiciary were jointly behind this conspiracy.

Khan said he wants to remind the prime minister that after the new army chief and chief justice took their oaths last year, his daughter Maryam Nawaz had tweeted that the ‘storm has passed… meaning the conditions were now favourable’ for her family.

“This means both the new army chief and chief justice are people who have complete confidence in them [the Sharifs]… today, they [the Sharifs] are pointing fingers at the same people,” said Khan. The Sharif family has done this for the past 30 years, the PTI chief alleged. “The umpire is either their own… or against them.”