LAHORE: A Pakistani court on Tuesday granted bail to Prime Minister Sherbaz Sharif’s daughter Rabia Imran and her husband Imran Yusuf in a major corruption and money laundering case.
Judge Ashfaq Ahmed allowed the couple’s bail application and gave the FBI until May 7 to arrest them.
“A special court in Lahore has granted interim pre-arrest bail until May 7 to Rabia Imran, the daughter of Prime Minister Shehbaz, and her husband Imran Yousaf in a major corruption and money laundering case. The couple appeared in person with their lawyers after arriving from the UK in 2022 to evade arrest,” a court official said.
Last week, an accountability court stayed the permanent arrest warrant issued against the couple in connection with the Punjab Safpani Corporation case, a multi-billion dollar corruption case.
The accountability court issued permanent arrest warrants against them in 2022 during the tenure of the Imran Khan government.
The Prime Minister’s daughter and her husband fled to the UK in 2022 and a court subsequently declared them criminals.
Interestingly, the country’s anti-corruption agency, the National Accountability Bureau, which filed a multi-billion dollar corruption case against the couple, told the accountability court that it had no objection if the court stayed the arrest warrant against them.
Prime Minister Shehbaz was also named in the corruption case but was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party has long claimed that the acquittal of Prime Minister Shehbaz and other members of the ruling coalition in various large-scale corruption cases was the result of “a damaged judicial system” and “the relationship between NAB and the Pakistan People’s Liberation Front.”
His party claimed the acquittals represented the “end of justice” and accused the judiciary of acting as a “silent accomplice” in state-sponsored political terrorism.
Khan was ousted through a no-confidence motion in April 2022. He was subsequently arrested in August 2023 and has since been imprisoned for multiple cases.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
