The bank accounts of eight companies owned by Salman Shehbaz, a son of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a professed assaulter in a Rs16 billion money laundering case brought by the Federal Investigation Agency, have been approved by a special court (central-I) to be unfrozen in order to pay employee salaries (FIA).
Amjad Parvez, the defense attorney, informed the court at the hearing that the FIA had frozen the bank accounts of the Salman-owned enterprises, preventing the employees from receiving their salaries for more than a year.
He said that since PO Salman Shehbaz was merely a shareholder and not the company’s owner, the accounts had nothing to do with him. The secretaries of the companies, Abid Rasool Awan, submitted a request for the bank accounts to be unfrozen.
He claimed that since the FIA frozen the bank accounts, thousands of employees of the companies—Chiniot Mines and Ramzan Sugar Mills—had not received their salaries.Presiding The application was approved, and the banks involved were told to unfreeze the affected accounts by Judge Ijaz Hassan Awan.
The judge also granted a one-time exemption from personal presence requests made by PM Shehbaz and his son, former chief minister Hamza Shehbaz. The lawyer informed the court that Hamza had asked for an exemption because of a medical ailment while the prime minister was away on an official tour.
