In 2011, when Shehbaz Sharif was the chief minister of Punjab he launched an affordable housing project called the Ashiana Iqbal in Lahore. Over 6,000 homes were to be built for the poor and needy near Barki road in the city. Land measuring 3,100 kanals were allocated for the purpose.
The lowest bidder, Chaudhry Abdul Latif and Sons, were awarded the contract in December 2012, to develop the homes. But a few months later, concerns were raised about the bidding process, after which Sharif formed an inquiry committee headed by Tariq Bajwa, the then finance secretary.
According to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), during this time Fawad Hassan Fawad, the then secretary implementation to the chief minister, “exerted undue pressure to have Latif and Sons’ contract cancelled” and rewarded to the second lowest bidder, a firm owned by Kamran Kiyani.
Eventually, the contract was withdrawn from Chaudhry Abdul Latif and Sons’ in 2013, on the recommendation of the probe committee. The company then went to court and received Rs. 5.9 million as a settlement by the Punjab government.
As for the construction of the Ashiana homes, the project was then handed over to Lahore Casa Developers, which is considered a proxy of Paragon City Limited.
The PML-N leader Khawaja Saad Rafique and his brother are accused of secretly running Paragon. But then in 2015, Casa also lost the contract for failing to start work. Not a single house was constructed despite taking instalments from people, claims the NAB.
The Bureau says Sharif awarded the contract to a favoured firm – Casa - and the collapsed project cost the national exchequer a loss of millions of rupees. It further accuses the former chief minister of launching the project with public-private partnership, which it insists is illegal.
The prime accused are Fawad Hasan Fawad, Ahad Cheema, the then chairman of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and Shehbaz Sharif.
This month, the Lahore High Court granted bail to Sharif and Fawad Hasan Fawad in the Ashiana case.
· The LHC judgment states that the allegations against Shehbaz Sharif have “not been supported by any documentary evidence.” Adding that in fact the Ashiana contract to Chaudhry Abdul Latif and Sons was never cancelled, instead, the “matter was finalized with mutual consent and settlement of the parties.”
· The Court questions why the NAB is insisting on the Ashiana project being executed solely by the government rather than through public-private partnership. “Even the sitting government has launched a project for the construction of 5 million houses under the same mode of public private partnership, and no objection has so far been raised by the NAB,” it states.
· Not a single person of the 61,000, who brought property in the Ashiana scheme, the Court notes, “made any statement before NAB against the petitioner [Shehbaz Sharif] to support the allegation” that a financial loss was caused to them.
· “There is no allegation against Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif that he misappropriated the funds allocated for the scheme or received any illegal gratification, commission or kickbacks from the contractor,” reads the judgment.
· The Court adds that a “deeper appreciation of evidence cannot be undertaken at a bail stage but at the same time, it is by now well settled that a bail petition cannot be decided in vacuum and a tentative assessment of evidence is permissible.”
