Hussain and Hassan, sons of Pakistan’s ruling Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, returned to the country on Tuesday after six years.
The return of Hussain and Hassan to Pakistan has come at a time when their uncle Shehbaz Sharif has won the elections for the first time and assumed the post of Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz left Pakistan in 2018 after being named in the 2016 Panama Papers scam. This case pertains to the Sharif family owning a luxurious apartment in London.
An accountability court had declared him a criminal in the Avenfield case in 2018 and issued a non-bailable permanent arrest warrant against him.
He had gone to London to avoid arrest. However, the accountability court has suspended his arrest warrant in the Panama Papers scam.
“Nawaz’s son arrived here from London on Tuesday and was taken to his ‘Jati Umra Lahore’ home under tight security,” the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party said in a statement.
Nawaz Sharif is the head of PML-N. The ‘Jati Umra’ residence of the Sharif family has already been declared as the Chief Minister’s residence, where heavy police force has been deployed for the security and protocol of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz and her father Nawaz Sharif.
Hussain and Hasan, through their lawyer, applied to the Islamabad Accountability Court requesting suspension of the warrants issued against them in the Avenfield Apartment, Al-Azizia and ‘Flagship Investment’ cases, which was accepted.
Last week, the court had suspended his arrest warrant till March 14 in three corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scam.
Both brothers are British citizens. Both of them were implicated in these cases in 2018 along with their father Nawaz Sharif, sister Maryam Nawaz and her husband Muhammad Safdar.
All the other accused, including Nawaz Sharif, have been acquitted in all cases and only these two brothers are still facing the courts as they were not formally tried in absentia.