Suleman Shehbaz is set to return to Pakistan after ending his exile of over four years in the British capital.
On his journey to Pakistan to conduct Umrah, Shehbaz Sharif’s son arrived in Saudi Arabia. He and his family will be traveling to Pakistan on Saturday.
Suleman traveled from Pakistan to London Before the 2018 general elections, where the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) started to file various cases against him.
He was also named in several cases along with his father, the current prime minister, his brother Hamza Shehbaz, and other Sharif family members.
Suleman was investigated in London by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) in Shahbaz’s money-laundering and misuse of public office case at the request of the Assets Recovery (ARU), led by Shahzad Akbar, Imran Khan’s former accountability aide. However, after two years of investigation by the UK’s top anti-corruption investigators, Suleman was given a clean slate.
Suleman stated he was forced to leave Pakistan as a result of fake and manipulated cases being filed against him and his family to allow the establishment of a new political system.
He said that nobody goes into exile, leaving their homeland behind, out of their free will and it’s only under unfair circumstances that he was left with no choice but to “leave Pakistan for safety”.
“There was no chance of any justice at that time when a whole system was put in place to bring in the hybrid system, displacing us as a family and as a political party. The whole system was based on injustice and this system relied on lies, manipulations, and victimization. The whole system was geared to target us using fake cases and using the state machinery.”
He said in a statement from Madinah: “These cases were the worst example of a political witch-hunt and political victimization. There was no truth and not a scintilla of evidence of corruption in the cases cooked up by the National Accountability Bureau under the former NAB chairman Javed Iqbal and the Assets Recovery Unit.”
“The former NAB chairman was blackmailed through a relationship scandal and scandalous videos by the previous regime in order to frame cases against me and my family.”
“He was told that he would be kicked out of the job if he didn’t frame these cases to provide non-stop lies to the media to assassinate our character. We will never wish this kind of cruelty to even our worst enemies in politics.”
Suleman then claimed that the ARU was created with the “single objective of hounding us through media trials and bogus charges” by misusing Pakistani government resources in Pakistan and the UK, but he failed miserably because there was no corruption.
Suleman was referring to the high-profile money-laundering investigation that the NCA started at the end of December 2019. As a result, his assets in London have been blocked thanks to Asset Freezing Orders (AFOs) obtained at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
According to official court documents made available with this publication, the inquiry was centered on PM Shehbaz and his son Suleman to “prove or deny” their suspected involvement in money laundering, fraud, corrupt activities, and the misuse of public position for money laundering.
After an investigation of two years stretched to Pakistan, UK, Dubai, Italy, Switzerland, and several offshore havens, the NCA informed the court that it was ending its investigation after finding no evidence of corruption, criminal conduct and abuse of public office.
The NCA aborted its money laundering investigation into Shehbaz and his son Suleman without any further action, unfreezing their assets.
Suleman was in London when the ARU sent more than a dozen requests to the UK government, via the British High Commission and the UK Home Office, to extradite him to Pakistan and prosecute him there. However, Suleman resisted all of the PTI administration’s efforts.
The ARU was successful only in getting the NCA to investigate Suleman and his father but in the end, the high-profile investigation ended without any findings of corruption or illegality.
