Panamagate: Nawaz Sharif’s fate awaited as Pakistan Supreme Court to announce verdict on Friday
The political future of Pakistan’s embattled Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will be decided tomorrow by the Supreme Court when it will announce its much-awaited verdict in the Panama scandal that also involves his family.
The scandal is about alleged money laundering by Sharif in 1990s, when he twice served as prime minister, to purchase assets in London. The assets surfaced when Panama Papers leak last year revealed that they were managed through offshore companies owned by Sharif’s children.
The assets include four expensive flats in London.
Sharif, who has been the prime minister of Pakistan for a record three time, faces the risk of being disqualified if the court finds him guilty of corruption and money laundering.
He leads Pakistan’s most powerful political family and the ruling PML-N party.
The verdict will be announce tomorrow at 11.30 am, according to a supplementary cause list issued this evening.
It is keenly awaited as both of Sharif’s first two stints have ended in the third year of his tenure.
A steel tycoon cum politician, Sharif had served as the Pakistan’s prime minister for the first time from 1990 to 1993. His second term from 1997 was ended in 1999 by the Army chieg Pervez Musharraf in a bloodless coup.
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