Suleman Shehbaz gets clean chit by FIA in money laundering case

Suleman Shehbaz gets clean chit by FIA in money laundering case

Lahore (Web Desk): The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Saturday gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s son Suleman Shehbaz in the alleged Rs16 billion money laundering case.

During today's hearing at the special court (central), the investigation agency submitted a supplementary challan, stating Suleman and co-accused were not found guilty.

Advocate Amjad Parvez informed the court that the, the accused petitioners wanted to withdraw their their bail pleas submitted earlier.

However, the court is set to hold trial proceedings on February 4.

Earlier, the court acquitted PM Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shehbaz Sharif in the money laundering case.

The court had also granted pre-arrest bail to Suleman Shehbaz.

In November 2020, the FIA had booked Shehbaz and his sons Hamza and Suleman under sections 419, 420, 468, 471, 34 and 109 of Prevention of Corruption Act and r/w 3/4 of Anti Money Laundering Act.

Arrest warrants had been issued for Suleman.

However, in its report submitted to the court, the FIA had stated that the warrants could not be executed since Suleman was not present at his address and had gone abroad.

Suleman had been declared a proclaimed offender in the case. Following this, he filed a bail plea on December 23, 2022, and then joined the investigation.

As per the the FIA report, the investigation team “detected 28 benami accounts of the Shehbaz family through which money laundering of Rs16.3bn was committed from 2008-18. The FIA examined a money trail of 17,000 credit transactions.”