Sharifs pay Shahbaz visit at NAB office in Lahore

Ousted premier Nawaz Sharif along with other members of Shahbaz's family paid the remanded opposition leader a visit at the National Accountability Bureau's (NAB) Lahore office on Sunday, two days after he was taken into custody by the bureau in the Ashiana Housing Scheme case.

Shahbaz's wife Nusrat, and his sons Hamza and Salman were present during the meeting which reportedly lasted an hour and 15 minutes.

According to DawnNewsTV, the meeting was arranged on the approval of NAB Director General Irfan Naeem Mangi at the bureau's Lahore office where the PML-N president is being kept under custody.

See: A timeline of developments in the Ashiana housing 'scam'

Following a hearing at the accountability court in Lahore on Saturday, the court had granted a 10-day physical remand of the PML-N president to NAB.

Allegations against Shahbaz Sharif

According to a NAB notice sent to the former Punjab chief minister on January 16, 2018, Shahbaz is accused of ordering the cancellation of award of contract of Ashiana-i-Iqbal housing scheme to successful bidder Chaudhry Latif and Sons, and engineering the award of the contract to Lahore Casa Developers — a proxy group of Paragon City Private Limited which resulted in the loss of approximately Rs193 million.

He is also accused of directing the Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) to assign the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), resulting in the award of contract to Lahore Casa Developers, causing a loss of Rs715m and the ultimate failure of the project.

NAB has also accused Shahbaz of directing the PLDC to award the consultancy services of the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project to Engineering Consultancy Services Punjab (ECSP) for Rs 192m while the actual cost was supposed to be Rs35m as quoted by Nespak.