Islamabad
Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for corruption, while his daughter Maryam Sharif has been given seven years. The verdict was delivered by an accountability court in Pakistan in one of the four cases of corruption against Nawaz Sharif – the Avenfield corruption case, which is related to the ownership of four flats in the posh Avenfield House in London.
The verdict comes three weeks before general elections in Pakistan on July 25.
Both Nawaz Sharif and Maryam are in London, attending to the former PM’s wife, Kulsoom Nawaz, who was diagnosed with throat cancer last year and shifted to the UK for treatment. Since then, Maryam and Nawaz Sharif have made several trips back and forth from London to attend the hearings and attend to Kulsoom.
Nawaz Sharif wanted the announcement of the verdict delayed by a week, but that request was dismissed by the court today. Mr Sharif had said he wanted to hear the judgement of the case while standing in the courtroom where he “endured more than 100 hearings” with his daughter.
Nawaz Sharif and Maryam were also fined heavily by the court. While Nawaz Sharif will have to pay $10 million, his daughter has been fined $2.6 million.
The court judgement runs over 100 pages.
The Avenfield case was among the four corruption cases filed against the former PM and his children by the NAB on the Supreme Court’s orders in the Panama Papers case which disqualified Nawaz Sharif.
Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister, resigned from the post last year after Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified him from holding public office and ruled that graft cases be filed against him and his children over the Panama Papers scandal.
