The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE)‘s Punjab Unit raided the house of former First Lady Bushra Bibi’s friend Farah Khan (also known as Farhat Shahzadi) over her involvement in a case regarding the allegedly illegal allotment of a commercial plot to her in Faisalabad.
The Faisalabad team of ACE raided Farah’s house in the city as part of the investigation into her alleged involvement in the allotment of a commercial plot originally worth Rs 600 million, for just Rs 80 million by setting up a fake company.
Previously, a police report revealed that an investigation was conducted into the allocation of two industrial plots to M/s AI-Muez Dairy & Foods (Pvt) Limited, which is owned by Farah Khan and her mother Bushra Khan. The two were then booked over these findings.
Farah, her mother and some officials of the Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management are nominated in the case registered by the ACE. Farah has been in the UAE for the last three months.
The ACE arrested two officials of the industrial estate, and is investigating Farah and her husband’s properties.
Meanwhile, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has directed Farah, her husband Ahsan Jameel Gujjar and 19 others to appear before the deputy director at the NAB provincial headquarters on July 20.
However, Azhar Siddique, Farah’s legal advisor, sent a letter to the anti-graft watchdog asking it to withdraw the notices against his client.
In the letter, he said that if the notices were not withdrawn immediately, they would be challenged in the high court. The letter also said that NAB is only authorized to investigate and inquire into offences by public office holders, and therefore it should ‘decide its own jurisdiction first’.
