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Pak anti-corruption court irked at Nawaz Sharif’s absence from hearing

Pak anti-corruption court irked at Nawaz Sharif's absence from hearing

TIL Desk/World/Islamabad/ A Pakistani anti-corruption court hearing graft cases against the embattled Sharif family expressed displeasure on Monday after deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif failed to appear before it in a corruption case.  Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Arshad Malik warned that he may cancel Sharif’s surety bond and issue arrest warrants if the former premier failed to appear before the bench in the Flagship Investment case hearing.

On the orders of the Supreme Court, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed three corruption cases against the 68-year-old three-time former prime minister. A top Pakistani court last month suspended the jail sentences of Sharif, his daughter and son-in-law in the Avenfield corruption case, one of the three corruption cases. The trio were released from a jail following the court order.

Apart from the Avenfield case, the Sharifs face jail terms if they are convicted in two more corruption cases related to the Al-Azizia and the Flagship Investment cases. The cases against the family stemmed from the Panama Papers case in April 2016.  The Flagship Investment Ltd case is based on information the NAB had obtained from the report filed by the Joint Investigation Team constituted by the Supreme Court to probe money laundering allegations against Sharif and his family.

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