National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) President Saeed Ahmed appeared before the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) investigation team in Lahore on Monday to record his statement in the ongoing references against Ishaq Dar’s assets and the Sharifs’ Avenfield properties in London, DawnNews reported.
According to bureau sources privy to the matter, a team headed by DG NAB Lahore is carrying out the investigation.
Earlier, Ahmed had informed the Supreme Court-appointed Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that he had no knowledge of any account linked with the alleged money laundering.
Dar had told the JIT that Ahmed was running a nursing home in London before his appointment as deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
Ahmed was summoned by the JIT due to his involvement in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case, which the JIT was examining as part of its probe into the Sharif family’s murky business dealings abroad.
Ahmed’s name had come into the national limelight when, after the Musharraf coup in 1998, current Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had declared him a “close friend” and claimed that Ahmed’s accounts had been used to ‘handle’ the Sharif family’s finances.
“The previously opened foreign currency accounts of Saeed Ahmed, one of the former directors of FHMC and a close friend of mine, and of Mussa Ghani, the nephew of my wife, were also used to deposit huge foreign currency funds provided by the Sharif family to offer them as collateral to obtain different and indirect credit lines,” Dar had said in his confession in the Hudaibiya case.
However, Dar had later disowned his confessions and said his statement was taken under duress.
Source: Dawn
