PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif made financial gains of $418 million during his twice stints as Prime Minister of the country, according to a book entitled Capitalism’s Achilles Heel by Raymond W Baker.
The book is a dossier on the corruption of most dominated political families in the history including Nawaz Sharif and how they accumulated their properties, factories and enormous wealth.
According to the book, at least $160 million were pocketed by Nawaz Sharif during his first stint as the Prime Minister in the 1990, from a contract to build a highway from Lahore, his home town, to Islamabad, the nation’s capital.
At least $140 million in unsecured loans from Pakistan’s state banks. More than $60 million generated from government rebates on sugar exported by mills controlled by Mr. Sharif and his business associates.
At least $58 million skimmed from prices paid for imported wheat from the United States and Canada. In the wheat deal, Mr. Sharif’s government paid prices far above market value to a private company owned by a close associate of his in Washington, the records show. Falsely in?ated invoices for the wheat generated tens of millions of dollars in cash.
The book review went on to state that “The extent and magnitude of this corruption is so staggering that it has put the very integrity of the country at stake.”
Under Sharif, unpaid bank loans and massive tax evasion remained the favorite ways to get rich.
Upon his loss of power the usurping government published a list of 322 of the largest loan defaulters, representing almost $3 billion out of $4 billion owed to banks. Sharif and his family were tagged for $60 million.
Like Bhutto, offshore companies have been linked to Sharif, three in the British Virgin Islands by the names of Nescoll, Nielson, and Shamrock and another in the Channel Islands known as Chandron Jersey Pvt. Ltd. Some of these entities allegedly were used to facilitate purchase of four rather grand flats on Park Lane in London, at various times occupied by Sharif family members.
In 1999 Musharraf had Sharif probed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, but then in 2000 exiled him to Saudi Arabia. Twenty-two containers of carpets and furniture followed, and, of course, his foreign accounts remained mostly intact. Ensconced in a glittering palace in Jeddah, he is described as looking “corpulent” amidst “opulent” surroundings.