Shahbaz, the younger brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was arrested by the country’s anti-bribery body National Accountability Office (NAB) a week after opposition parties launched an alliance to hold a protest movement across the country to overthrow the Imran khan government.
Shahbaz, 69, was detained at the courthouse, where a large number of PML-N workers gathered before the hearing.
The NAB took him to the Lahore detention center and will take him to the liability court for his physical remand.
The two-member LHC bank headed by Sardar Ahemd Naeem rejected his bail after hearing arguments from the NAB team and Shahbaz’s lawyer.
The Imran Khan government last week filed the money laundering case against Shahbaz, who served as Punjab’s chief minister from 2008 to 2018, and his family.
Advisor to the Prime Minister for the Interior and Responsibility Shahzad Akbar on September 23 alleged that Shahbaz and his sons Hamza and Salman were involved in money laundering through bogus accounts.
Akbar said the financial monitoring unit had detected 177 suspicious transactions from Shahbaz’s family, after which NAB launched an investigation.
It alleged that billions of rupees were laundered through employees of companies owned by Shahbaz and his sons.
Akbar accused Shahbaz and Hamza of receiving kickbacks and kickbacks in exchange for party tickets and projects for favorites.
Before his arrest, Shahbaz told the media that Prime Minister Khan wanted him arrested.
“It is the unholy alliance of Imran Khan and NAB that wanted to put me behind bars,” said Shahbaz.
In reaction to his arrest, PML-N spokeswoman Maryam Nawaz said Shahbaz had been arrested only because he did not leave his older brother.
Claiming that it was a political victimization by the government, he said: “This policy of revenge cannot cool the spirits of our workers.”
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari condemned Shehbaz’s arrest and said Prime Minister Khan was concerned after opposition parties launched an alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement, to overthrow the Imran Khan government.
The opposition anticipated a strong reaction from the government following Nawaz Sharif’s attack on the army at the multi-party conference more than a week ago.
Sharif, while addressing the conference via video link from London, spoke about the Army’s involvement in politics and said that in the country “there is a state above the state.”
He said that the opposition’s joint struggle is not against Khan but against those who imposed an “inefficient” man on the nation through rigged elections in 2018. ”
The opposition anticipates more arrests. The NAB has already issued a convocation notice to JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who is also leading the joint opposition campaign against the government in the Beyond Media Revenue Case.
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