A Pakistani accountability court today ordered the country's financial regulatory agency to freeze the company shares of ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's two sons in the Panama Papers case.
The shares held by Hassan and Hussain will become part of case record and will remain in the court's custody. In case, the court rules against the accused in the corruption references filed against them by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), the shares will be auctioned off.
The court had declared Hassan and Hussain proclaimed offenders earlier this month for repeatedly failing to appear before the court in connection with the cases.
NAB prosecutor Afzal Qureshi has submitted to the court a report detailing assets held by Hassan and Hussain in Pakistan. The bureau has already frozen the assets of the two brothers.
According to the report, the duo holds shares in six companies in Pakistan, as per Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan records.
The court directed SECP to attach shares held by both accused after seizing them. The proceedings concerning assets of Hassan and Hussain were subsequently adjourned until November 14.
While declaring the former premier's sons proclaimed offenders, the accountability court had also issued perpetual warrants for their arrest and separated their trial from other members of the family.
Asked at the time when her brothers, Hassan and Hussain, would appear before the court, their sister and Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz had said that they would take their decisions themselves.
"My brothers live abroad... the laws of here [Pakistan] don't apply to them," she had said.
The cases were registered weeks after the Supreme Court disqualified 67-year Sharif as prime minister on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal.
A five-member bench of the Supreme Court on July 28 had directed NAB to file cases against Nawaz and his children in six weeks in the accountability court and directed the trial court to decide the cases within six months.
The Supreme Court also assigned Justice Ijazul Ahsan a supervisory role to monitor the progress of the accountability court proceedings.
The former premier and his sons have been named in all three NAB cases, while daughter Maryam and her husband retired Captain Muhammad Safdar have been named only in the Avenfield case.
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