ISLAMABAD/NEW YORK: Pakistan’s anti-corruption agency will open a criminal investigation into former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and current Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, it said on Thursday.
Sharif was ousted in July after the Supreme Court deemed him unfit to hold office for not declaring a small source of income, and ordered the agency, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), to instigate a criminal investigation into him, his family and Dar.
The agency said its investigation would rely on the evidence collected by a Supreme Court-appointed six-man panel that was investigating the Sharif family’s wealth and included officers from powerful military intelligence agencies.
“The chairman (of) NAB directed that the prosecution of the cases will be followed up vigorously in the concerned Accountability Courts,” the agency said in a statement.
Sharif, his family, and Dar have denied any wrongdoing.
The three-time premier said he never received the income that investigators said he did not declare.
Sharif has said there was a conspiracy against him but did not identify anyone. Instead, he named long-time loyalist Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as his replacement as prime minister until the next election, expected in mid-2018.
Pakistan has for decades been plagued by pervasive graft, as well as by rivalry between the military and civilian politicians.
The NAB’s conviction rates are notoriously low and Sharif has multiple investigations by the agency pending against him, including one dating back to 1999.
US ousts Pakistani bank
US banking regulators ordered Pakistan’s Habib Bank to shutter its New York office after nearly 40 years, for repeatedly failing to heed concerns over possible terrorist financing and money laundering, officials said Thursday.
Habib, Pakistan’s largest private bank, neglected to watch for compliance problems and red flags on transactions that potentially could have promoted terrorism, money laundering or other illicit ends, New York banking officials said.
The state’s Department of Financial Services, which regulates foreign banks, also slapped a $225 million fine on the bank, although that is much smaller than the $629.6 million penalty initially proposed.
Habib has operated in the US since 1978, and in 2006 was ordered to tighten its oversight of potentially illegal transactions but failed to comply.
New York regulators said Habib ffailed to do enough to ensure that the funds were not laundered.
“DFS will not tolerate inadequate risk and compliance functions that open the door to the financing of terrorist activities that pose a grave threat to the people of this State and the financial system as a whole,” DFS Superintendent Maria Vullo said in a news release.
“The bank has repeatedly been given more than sufficient opportunity to correct its glaring deficiencies, yet it has failed to do so.”
Habib permitted at least 13,000 transactions that were not sufficiently screened to ensure they did not involve sanctioned countries, the agency said.
And the bank improperly used a “good guy” list to rubber stamp at least $250 million in transactions, including those by an identified terrorist and an international arms dealer, regulators said.
In an August letter to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, Habib company secretary, Nausheen Ahmad called the proposed fine of $629.6 million “outrageous” and “capricious” and said the bank had decided to close its New York operations “in an orderly manner.”
But DFS said Habib will have to surrender its license after it meets the agency’s requirements.
“DFS will not stand by and let Habib Bank sneak out of the United States,” Vullo said.