Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif sentenced to 10 years jail, daughter Maryam gets 7
New Delhi : Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for corruption charges. His daughter Maryam Sharif has also been punished with seven years of imprisonment. The court verdict was delivered in accordance with one of the four cases of corruption against Nawaz Sharif, the Avenfield corruption case, which is related to the ownership of four flats in the aristocratic Avenfield House in London.
"(Nawaz Sharif) has been awarded 10 years imprisonment" over the purchase of high-end properties in London, defence lawyer Mohammad Aurangzeb told news agency AFP. Prosecution lawyer Sardar Muzaffar Abbas also said that the court had ordered the properties be confiscated.
The final judgment comes three weeks before general elections in Pakistan which is scheduled to be held on July 25.
For now, daughter Maryam along with father Nawaz Sharif are in London, attending to mother Kulsoom Nawaz, who was diagnosed with throat cancer last year and shifted to the UK for treatment. Since then, Maryam and Nawaz Sharif have made several trips back and forth from London to attend the hearings and attend to Kulsoom.
Nawaz Sharif requested the court to delay the verdict announcement by a week, but his plea was dismissed by the court today. Sharif had said he wanted to hear the judgement of the case while standing in the courtroom where he "endured more than 100 hearings" with his daughter.
Nawaz Sharif and Maryam were also charged with heavy fines by the court. While Nawaz Sharif will have to pay $10 million, his daughter has been fined $2.6 million.
The Avenfield case was among the four corruption cases filed against the former PM and his children by the NAB on the Supreme Court's orders in the Panama Papers case which disqualified Nawaz Sharif.
Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister, resigned from the post last year after Pakistan's Supreme Court disqualified him from holding public office and ruled that joined cases be filed against him and his children over the Panama Papers scandal.
