PAC summons NAB chairman, AG to explain Broadsheet agreement

Taking notice of an agreement between the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Broadsheet, Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has summoned NAB chairman and the Auditor General (AG) on January 19th, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Friday.

Quoting sources in PAC, the channel reported that the purpose of summoning NAB Chairman Justice (r) Javed Iqbal was to know as to why and when the Bureau had hired the services of Broadsheet, and why Rs4.5 billion were paid to the British firm.

On January 1, 2021, the Pakistan High Commission had made a payment of $28.706 million (Rs4.59 billion), on behalf of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), to the assets recovery firm, Broadsheet LLC, after losing the long-running litigation at the London High Court – 21 years after hiring the firm to trace alleged foreign assets of dozens of Pakistanis and being unable to find any.

The London High Court’s Financial Division had issued on December 17 a Final Third Party Order for payment to the NAB’s former client Broadsheet by December 30 – drawing curtains on a case that has cost Pakistani taxpayers billions of rupees.

Ironically, Broadsheet was hired by the NAB during Pervez Musharraf’s government in 2003 to trace assets in the UK and the USA of more than 200 Pakistanis, including generals, politicians, businessmen, primarily Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif as the chief targets.

The firm did not recover a single asset of any target anywhere in the world but its litigation against the NAB started over the broken contract when the latter ended its contract in violation of the terms and conditions.