Ishaq Dar’s frozen assets restored

LAHORE     –  The au­thorities in Lahore restored Pa­kistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s frozen as­sets on Thursday on orders of the National Accountability Bu­reau (NAB). NAB also issued a notification to the relevant au­thorities to restore the finance minister’s bank accounts which had earlier been frozen. Earli­er this month, the bureau’s La­hore headquarters issued a letter to the district administra­tion to restore the frozen assets of the finance minister. It had ordered unfreezing the prop­erty of Hajveri House while di­recting the concerned authori­ties to restore Rs507.9 million to the account of Bank Alfalah and Rs0.365 million to the ac­count of Habib Bank. Dar’s as­sets were frozen after his con­tinuous absence from court proceedings. It is pertinent to mention here that a refer­ence against Dar, Saeed Ahmed, Naeem Mahmood, and Man­soor Raza Rizvi was filed in 2017. In the reference, NAB al­leged that the finance minister acquired assets and ‘pecuniary interests’ and resources beyond his known sources of income in his own name and in the name of his dependents amounting to Rs831.678 million.