ISLAMABAD: Two members of the joint investigation team (JIT) probing allegations of financial impropriety against the Sharif family on Tuesday left for Doha with a questionnaire for former Qatari premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al-Thani, a private TV channel reported.
Irfan Naeem Mangi from the National Accountability Bureau and Brigadier Kamran Khurshid from Military Intelligence reportedly departed for Doha a little after 3:00am to record responses to the JIT’s questions for Sheikh Hamad on Qatar Airways flight QR 633, it was learnt. They were expected to return to Islamabad later the same day. Speculations that members of the JIT had already left for Doha were triggered after it was revealed that only four members of the six-member JIT were present during proceedings earlier in the day when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s son Hussain Nawaz appeared at the Federal Judicial Academy for questioning for the sixth time. The need to record Qatari billionaire’s statement arose when, during hearings of the Panamagate case in the Supreme Court, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s counsel submitted two letters authored by Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar from 2007 to 2013, as evidence backing his claims. A second letter from Al-Thani was submitted on January 26 and like the first, which was submitted in court last November, was marked private, confidential and not to be disclosed to any party, except for the benefit of the courts of Pakistan. In the letter, Al-Thani said the premier’s father, Mian Mohammad Sharif, made an investment of approximately 12 million dirhams in the Al-Thani family’s real estate business. The second Qatari letter was also accompanied by transaction details and auditor’s reports regarding the Gulf Steel Mills in Dubai and the Azizia Steel Mills in Jeddah.
Published in Daily Times, July 5th , 2017.
