The Lahore High Court (LHC) has ordered the return of Rs70 million deposited as a guarantee by Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case.
The decision was announced by a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Aalia Neelum while hearing a petition filed by the chief minister.
According to details, the amount was deposited by Maryam Nawaz as a security guarantee during earlier proceedings of the case. After the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) formally closed the case, she moved the court requesting the return of the deposited funds.
In her petition, the chief minister maintained that since the proceedings had been concluded and the case disposed of by NAB, there was no legal requirement to retain the guarantee amount.
The court examined the petition along with the available record of the case. After reviewing the facts, the bench accepted the request and ordered the release of the Rs70 million.
The Lahore High Court directed the relevant authorities to return the deposited amount in accordance with its ruling. Further administrative procedures are expected to be completed to facilitate the refund process.
Earlier, The Chaudhry Sugar Mills money-laundering investigation had begun after the Financial Monitoring Unit (FMU) flagged billions of rupees in suspicious transactions under the Anti-Money Laundering Act in January 2018. At that time, the PML-N was in power.
Following the FMU report, the anti-graft watchdog launched a formal inquiry in October 2018. The probe revealed that Nawaz, Maryam, Shahbaz Sharif, Abbas Sharif, and other family members were shareholders in the company, along with foreign investors from the UAE and the UK.
The probe had found that between 2001 and 2017, investments worth billions of rupees were made in Chaudhry Sugar Mills under the pretext of issuing shares to foreign partners.
Later, these shares were repeatedly transferred back to Maryam, Hussain Nawaz, and Nawaz without any payment being made to the original foreign shareholders.
Maryam had also been taken into custody by the anti-corruption watchdog in August 2019 in connection with the same case.
