LHC grants bail to Cheeni

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday granted post-arrest bail to Mushtaq Cheeni, an alleged front man of Shahbaz family, in a money laundering case made by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The counsel of Cheeni argued before the LHC that his client had turned approver in the case against Hamza and Salman and recorded his confessional statement before a judicial magistrate. Later, the trial court sent the petitioner to jail on judicial remand. The counsel said the NAB no more required the petitioner in the case and keeping him behind the bars would serve no purpose. Therefore, he asked the court to release the petitioner on bail. The bench comprising Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Sardar Ahmad Naeem allowed the petition and granted bail to Cheeni subject to two surety bonds of Rs500,000 each. Cheeni in his confessional statement had claimed that he laundered money over Rs 600 million for Hamza and his brother. The approver said he had been working for the two brothers since they started looking after their family business of sugar in 2005. Cheeni said he was a wholesale dealer for Ramzan Sugar Mills and Hamza and Salman used to receive foreign remittances through bank accounts of his company Mushtaq & Co.

The NAB alleged that Hamza maintained various accounts in different banks in which credit turnover of Rs 500 million was observed during 2006 and 2017. It alleged that Hamza received fictitious foreign remittances of Rs 181 million in one of his bank accounts, Rs 2.11 billion in the accounts of his brother Salman, mother Nusrat, Benamidars and employees of their companies.