Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif increased his industrial units from one to 30 during his political career as Punjab finance minister to prime minister for the third time, documents available with Online reveal.

In his address to the nation, the prime minister talked about the industrial empire owned by the Sharif family and payment of taxes of millions of rupees, but the documents contradict the claim as he and his family have shown a negligible income and value of assets while paying taxes which were in a few thousand rupees. According to the official documents available with Online, the Sharif family shown its income of about Rs 7,623 in 1970-71, assets of about Rs 7,194 and paid zero tax.

As per the prime minister, when the Ittefaq Foundry was returned to Sharif family in 1979 it was almost bankrupt, while official documents show that when Gen (r) Ziaul Haq returned the foundry in June 1979, loans of about Rs 83.4 million against the group were written off by the military regime. According to Nawaz, in 1989 the PPP government did not allow the ship Jonathan to offload their imported goods for one year and the Ittefaq Foundry had to face a financial loss of Rs 500 million. However, the Sharif family showed total income of Rs 938,311 and total assets of Rs 242,915 in 1988-89.

According to the documents, in 1992-93 total income of about Rs 43,727 and assets worth Rs 311,573 were declared by the Sharif family while the family paid only Rs 6,170 in income tax. Similarly, in the year 1993-94, the Sharif family declared its total income at Rs 282,504 and value of assets at Rs 181,491, while only tax of Rs 104,22 was paid by the family. In mid 90s about four luxury flats were purchased by the Sharif family in Avenfield House Park London through offshore companies namely Nelson and Nescol the documents reveal.

According to official record of 1984-85, when Nawaz was the provincial finance minister, he had one industrial unit and in 1985, when he became Punjab chief minister, the number of industrial units had jumped to nine. In 1991-93, when, he became the prime minister for the first time, these industrial units jumped from nine to 30. According to the documents, Nawaz used his political power to steal Pakistan’s resources, and Ittefaq Industries grew from its original single foundry into 30 businesses producing steel, sugar, paper and textiles with a combine revenues of $4,000 million, according to documents which quote a book titled “Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System”.

According to the documents, Nawaz misused his official powers as finance minister and later as prime minister and took heavy loans for his 19 industrial units from public and private financial institutions.

The total volume of loans which the Sharif family had to pay by 1993 was approximately over Rs 6,146 million.