Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif got Rs 6,380 million loans in the name of his factories and then got these loans rescheduled before setting up the offshore companies, according to the Panama Papers leaks.

The Supreme Court already has the record of these loans. Sharif got these loans in the name of six sugar mills and eight textile mills owned by his family. Sharif had written off Rs 350 million loans during his previous tenure as prime minister of Pakistan.

Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid neither denied nor confirmed that the prime minister got these loans. He however advised this scribe to submit this information to the proposed judicial commission. The federal minister said the government had already written a letter to the Supreme Court chief justice to form a judicial commission, which would look into the charges against the people who allegedly got their loans written off.

According to the documents, Sharif misused his power to get these loans from different Pakistani banks during his previous tenure in the office. He gave insufficient guarantees against these loans.

The evidence showed that Sharif misused his power and got Rs 1,556 million loan in the name of the Ittefaq Foundries. A loan of Rs 543 million was got in the name of Haseeb Ramzan Sugar Mills. The mill has been accused of Rs 22 million gas theft. The Sharif family got a loan of Rs 455 million from a bank in the name of Mehran Ramzan Textile Mills. Similarly, a Rs 373 million loan was got in the name of Ramzan Bukhsh Textile Mills and Rs 339 million loan in the name of Chaudhry Sugar Mills.

The Sharif family borrowed Rs226 million in the name of Ittefaq Brothers and Rs 205 million in the name of the Sandal Bar Textile Mills. The report revealed that a Rs 182 million loan was given to the Sharif family for Hudaibiya Engineering and a Rs 153 million loan for Hamza Bolts Mills.

The Sharif family got Rs 134 million for the Hudaibiya Paper Mills and Rs 351 million for Brothers Steel Mills.

They got Rs 174 million for Brothers Textile Mills, Rs 159 million for Brother Steel Mills again and Rs 623 million for Ramzan Sugar Mills located in Chiniot.

The Sharif family got Rs 191 million for Khalid Siraj Textile Mills, Rs 313 million for Ittefaq Sugar Mills, Rs 164 million for Ittefaq Textile Mills and Rs 239 million for Ittefaq Brothers.

According to the petition pending in the Supreme Court, loans worth Rs 35 billion were either written off or rescheduled during the previous tenures of Sharif as prime minister.

The Supreme Court has constituted a judicial commission headed by Justice (Retd) Syed Jamshed Ali Shah to look into the written off loans. The commission compiled a comprehensive report and submitted it to the chief justice of Pakistan.

At that time, Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry took a suo motu notice on a letter written by Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain and then started proceedings against those who got their loans written off.