TOWARD the end of 2019, something unusual happened at a provincial cabinet meeting in Islamabad. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Shahzad Akbar was allowed to introduce ‘something off the agenda’; there was a sealed envelope stating that it contained a non-disclosure agreement. It was about a multi-billion dollar payment when the UK Crime Agency (NCA) based in the UK recently contacted the celebrity Malik Riaz. According to a source present at the meeting, “[Minister of Human Rights] Shireen Mazari declined, saying,‘ What kind of permit do we have if we do not know where it is?
The NCA is investigating money laundering and money laundering in the UK and other countries, and in the case of the latter, it returns stolen money to the affected countries.
In South Africa, as a result of a non-disclosure agreement, the matter was placed under a rug. Despite allegations that the perpetrators retaliated and obtained illegal profits illegally stored abroad by the Pakistani people, the PTI government has been embroiled in a heated debate over the expropriation agreement.
For more than a year, this episode has been kept secret. With the help of documents obtained by a journalism research project at UK Finance Funds, Dawn gained a complete picture.
The agreement with the NCA took the citizens of Pakistan while Mr Riaz wrote on Twitter: “I have sold our legal property and announced in the UK that I have paid 190M £ in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against Bahria Town Karachi.” It can be recalled that a few months ago, in March 2019, the High Court granted Mr Riaz’s application for Rs460bn as his construction company Bahria Town Ltd after he was found to have illegally acquired thousands of hectares of land in the Karachi area of Malir. region.
The value, which translates to about $ 3 billion, was history on the scale. But an agreement with the NCA later that year was critical because, thanks to the Pakistani government, it gave Mr Riaz a shocking chance.
Attorney Farrukh Qureshi of Samdani and Qureshi described it this way: “It is as if a person is being charged with a crime, and instead of giving back to the victim, it is used to pay for another case. … The proceeds should have been [returned] directly to Pakistan, rather than returned to the pockets of Malik Riaz. ”
Indeed, the British legal agency in this case may have allowed it to be used by Pakistani power dealers. The ‘governor of defense’, Mr Akbar, did not answer Dawn’s questions despite repeated requests.
London’s £ 50 million assets are part of a £ 190m deal. Design and photography: Tessuto Interiors London
The building includes 1 Hyde Park Place, an area of £ 50m. It is located in one of London’s most expensive apartments, purchased by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2007. Over the next four years a number of high-profile companies, including interior designer Tessuto, rebuilt existing offices and apartments into one-stop-shop. The changes include the excavation of the basement and the construction of a swimming pool.
On March 21, 2016 the property was sold by Mr Sharif’s son Hasan Nawaz for £ 42.5m to British Virgin Islands company Ultimate Holdings Management Ltd. Mr Riaz’s son, Ali Riaz Malik, signed Ultimate Holdings; he was represented by the law firm Mischon de Reya. Mr Nawaz signed, as evidenced by his lawyer Jeremy Freeman. (A few weeks before the sale, Mr. Nawaz was contacted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists about the Sharif family’s maritime companies that appeared in the Panama Papers.)
