News Analysis |
A BBC Urdu report disclosed that properties, the London apartments owned by the Sharif family in London’s upscale Park Lane neighborhood were purchased in the 1990s and there has been no change of ownership since then. This report published by the BBC refutes the argument presented by members of the Sharif family who went into the JIT well rehearsed and still managed to mess things up in their “grand play”.
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The mystery of 12-A, Avenfield House
According to several reports including the one by BBC, four flats were purchased in the name of the Nielsen and Nescoll companies, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s son, Hussain Nawaz, had accepted the family’s ownership of the companies.
Put in simple words, how can one person buy a property in 2004 when he already owned the property in 2001 as per record?
The report further said that another flat, 12-A, which is situated in Evan Field House, was purchased in the name of Flagship Investment Ltd on January 29, 2004. Flagship Investment Ltd documents showed us that Hassan Nawaz was the director of the company. A government record of companies doing business in the United Kingdom revealed that Hassan Nawaz established Flagship Investment Ltd in 2001. The address provided by Hassan at the time of registration of the company was that of his Park Lane apartment.
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This automatically raises a question that many of Pakistan’s media and public offices have refused to ask. How did Hassan Nawaz establish Flagship Investment Ltd, in a flat, in 2001, The same flat that he “Purchased” using his “grandfathers” money in 2004, with no record of any other previous agreement or settlement? Put in simple words, how can one person buy a property in 2004 when he already owned the property in 2001 as per record?
Without even moving further ahead it is already clear that there are pests destroying the crop but Pakistan’s main stream media ignores them saying that the crop is flourishing.
Haunted “flats”
The first thing that needs to be kept in mind is that Hussain Nawaz said, in his rejoinder filed in the Supreme Court, that he bought the London apartments in January 2006. Hassan said neither he nor Maryam or Hussain had purchased these properties between 1993 and 1996 as alleged by Imran Khan. The second thing to keep in mind is that the Nielson and Nescol offshore companies purchased the flats in the 1990s and there has been no transfer of ownership ever since.
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Without even moving further ahead it is already clear that there are pests destroying the crop but Pakistan’s main stream media ignores them saying that the crop is flourishing. Now, to the question, did the young Sharifs buy those apartments through their companies, according to which Imran Khan’s allegations are spot on, or, do the Sharifs not own any of those offshore companies at all, the later refuting all the arguments except the one, that they OWN THE FLATS since the Sharif family did, in fact, mortgaged four properties to the Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA for a loan of GBP 7 million.
Connecting the dots leading to the companies
Keeping in mind that the Panama Papers on April 3rd revealed that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s three children were among dozens of powerful people who own offshore companies in international tax havens. The argument simply concludes there and then that they alleged party has been an owner of those flats since the 1990s but to prove it further let’s look at further facts.
All these properties were never sold or given or rented by any one else but were simultaneously owned by the Sharifs since we have established the fact that they used them for a mortgage.
According to the documents of a property buying and selling organization in London, the first flat in central London’s Mayfair residence was bought at 17 Avenfield House by Nescol Ltd on June 1, 1993. The second, flat 16 was bought by Nelson Enterprises Ltd in the same building on July 31, 1995. The third flat, 16-A, was bought on the same date by the same company while the fourth, 17-A, was bought by Nescol on July 23, 1996.
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All these properties were never sold or given or rented by any one else but were simultaneously owned by the Sharifs since we have established the fact that they used them for a mortgage. This simply is pointing out the fact that they indeed were involved in those companies