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A Supreme Court ruling in 2017 cost then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif his chair, and another SC ruling has brought his party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, back in power in 2022. The new government, under his brother Shehbaz Sharif, has now said it is considering quashing the corruption sentences against Nawaz and allow him to plead his cases afresh.
Pakistan’s Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan said earlier in May that both the central as well as the Punjab government had the power to repeal or suspend a “wrong” sentence so the accused could approach courts again, and these “provisions might be used to provide relief” to Nawaz and others, according to a report in the Dawn.
The Pakistan SC had disqualified Nawaz from holding the PM’s post because it found him not “sadiq and ameen” (honest and righteous), as the country’s religion-influenced constitution says public representatives should be. In the subsequent corruption trials that followed, matters debated included when the Calibri font was made available for public use, as the authenticity of a document depended on this.
A look at the corruption cases that brought down the longest-serving Pakistan PM in his third term.
Nawaz Sharif’s third term in office, which began in 2013, was going far from smoothly, with run-ins with the Army and opposition leader Imran Khan snapping at his heels. However, trouble for him began in earnest when his family’s name surfaced in the Panama Papers leak in April 2016.
The Panama Papers claimed Nawaz’s children — daughter and political heir Maryam Nawaz, and sons Hasan and Hussein — owned undeclared firms and assets offshore. The firms were British Virgin Islands-based Nescoll Ltd, Nielsen Enterprises Ltd and Hangon Property Holdings Ltd. The allegation was that these companies were used to launder money and buy foreign assets, including an apartment in a posh London neighbourhood.
Nawaz and family denied any wrongdoing. However, Imran Khan and other politicians used the scandal to demand the PM’s resignation, soon approaching the country’s apex court. In April 2017, a five-judge bench gave a 3:2 ruling that Nawaz could continue in office, but a joint investigation team should look into the allegations against him. The JIT submitted its report, and in July 2017, the SC disqualified the PM from holding public office.
What the SC said
The SC’s decision, however, was not over the Panama allegations. While it directed that an accountability court hear those corruption charges – the Avenfield properties case and the Azizia Steel Company case – the SC based its disqualification decision over something else the JIT found.
The JIT had claimed that Nawaz served as chairman of a Dubai-based company, drawing a salary of 10,000 dirhams between August 7, 2006 and April 20, 2014, which he did not declare in his nomination papers. Nawaz’s defence argued that while he did serve in that post and was entitled to a salary, he never drew it.
The court, however, reasoned, “…the statement that he did not withdraw the salary would not prevent the un-withdrawn salary from being receivable, hence [making it] an asset.” The SC ruled that not declaring this asset meant Nawaz was not “sadiq and ameen” and disqualified him, later clarifying the disqualification was for life.
The SC had directed the accountability court to heat the Avenfield and Azizia cases against the Sharifs, along with other Panama allegations.
In July 2018, three members of the family were fined and sentenced to jail – Nawaz for 10 years, Maryam for seven, and her husband Captain Safdar for one year – in the Avenfield apartments case, as they could not show that the posh London property had been bought legitimately.
While Nawaz was sentenced for owning assets beyond income, the other two were held guilty of abetment and not cooperating with the probe agency.
It was in this case that Maryam had presented a trust deed dated February 2006, in Microsoft’s Calibri font, which became commercially available only in 2007.
Nawaz Sharif vacuum: What it means in Pakistan and for talks with India
Nawaz and his kin were jailed, but in September 2018, the Islamabad High Court ordered their release and suspended their sentence pending final adjudication of their appeals against it.
Months after the HC relief, in December 2018, Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to jail again, for seven years, in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills case. The accountability court held that the PMLN chief had been unable to show how he earned the money to set up Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment (HME) in Saudi Arabia.
The Sharifs had claimed that the funds came from some investments Nawaz’s father, Mian Mohammad Sharif, had made with the Qatar royal family.
The court, however, found Nawaz innocent in a similar case about setting up Flagship Investment in the United Kingdom.
In October 2019, Nawaz had to be taken to a Lahore hospital from jail after his health deteriorated. His conviction was then suspended for eight weeks on medical grounds. In November 2019, he was allowed to fly to London for treatment for four weeks. Nawaz has not returned to Pakistan since, but has been involved in the country’s politics through video meetings and addresses since 2020.
Pictures of Nawaz appearing in good health surfaced on social media that year, prompting then PM Imran to say in August 2020 that his government “regretted” the “mistake” of letting the PMLN leader leave for the UK.
In December 2020, Nawaz was declared a proclaimed offender by the Islamabad High Court after he failed to appear for the hearings of his appeals against the Avenfield and Al Azizia convictions.
In September 2021, Pakistan’s anti-graft body started the process of auctioning Nawaz’s properties to recover the $10-million fine in the Avenfield case.
While serving time for his other convictions, Nawaz was in October 2019 arrested in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills shares money laundering case. Maryam had been arrested in the case earlier. Both later received bail.
In October 2020, the National Accountability Bureau approved another case against Nawaz Sharif and some others, over the alleged illegal purchase of 73 high-security vehicles for foreign dignitaries. They are accused of favouritism and illegal use of vehicles, causing a loss of over Rs 1,952 million to the national exchequer.
Controversy over the convictions
The Sharifs and their supporters have maintained that the corruption cases are a result of “political vendetta”.
In November 2021, a former top judge of Gilgit-Baltistan, Rana Shamim, purportedly claimed in an affidavit that he witnessed former chief justice of Pakistan, Mian Saqib Nisar, instructing a high court judge to not release Nawaz and Maryam in a corruption case in 2018. While Nisar denied the allegation, Maryam, as quoted in Dawn, cited it as “the third major testimony from within the judiciary” about the innocence of her and her father.
The other two “testimonies”, according to Maryam, were Islamabad High Court judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui claiming in 2018 that the ISI was manipulating judicial proceedings, specially those related to the Sharif father-daughter; and late accountability judge Arshad Malik saying in a purported video in 2019 that he convicted Nawaz unfairly due to “immense pressure”. Judge Malik, who died in 2020, had claimed the video was “fake and based on lies”.
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