Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said on Thursday that UK-based firm Broadsheet LLC found evidence of wrongdoing by many but it was unable to incriminate PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif.
The former prime minister was speaking to the media outside an accountability court in Karachi.
He complained of a lack of accountability for those mandated to hold politicians accountable. They were not authorized to pay Rs7 billion to a company from public money, he added.
Broadsheet CEO Kaveh Mousavi was asked two days ago about the response to an interview he gave to journalist Irfan Hashmi.
“It is a complete spin to say that the discharge of the Avenfield apartments exonerates the Sharif family,” he said. “That order was discharged after we withdrew it, because we were able to find other money belonging to the Government of Pakistan that satisfied the amount due to us.”
Mousavi said the London arbitration court judgment proved that his company found money stolen by the Sharifs and others. “We could have brought it back to the people of Pakistan,” he added.
Abbasi said he was being questioned over the previous government’s privatization efforts, particularly about the Pakistan Steel Mills. He defended the decisions, saying the PSM had been on the privatization list since the 1990s.
Nobody had been able to wind up the matter in a way that upholds the interest of PSM employees.