Pak court orders 9-day custody for senior minister of prime minister's party

A court in Pakistan on Thursday ordered that a senior Punjab minister from Prime Minister Imran Khan's ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party be held in detention for nine days so that the top anti-graft body can question him on corruption allegations. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Wednesday arrested Punjab government's powerful senior minister Abdul Aleem Khan for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income.

The Accountability Court Lahore accepted the NAB's request and granted Aleem's physical remand till February 15. The NAB said it has arrested the minister fearing that he might tamper with the record regarding his offshore companies and other suspected dubious transactions.

Aleem, while being the secretary of the Parkview Cooperative Housing Society, a member of the Punjab Assembly, and minister for information technology during the 2005-06 period, had been involved in acts of corruption, the anti-graft body said. "The suspect accumulated assets beyond known sources of income within Pakistan and outside," it said in a statement.

"He established multiple companies with the purpose of real estate business and invested millions of rupees. He bought more than 900 kanals land in different mauzas of Lahore in the name of his company M/s A&A Pvt Ltd, and also paid advance for an additional 600 kanals of land [that] he could not account for the sources of the said investments," the NAB said. In 2005-06, apart from the inland assets, suspect Aleem established offshore companies in the United Arab Emirates and the UK, it added.

Earlier, NAB officials brought Aleem to the court amid tight security to seek his remand. The court building was sealed off and a large number of police personnel were deployed along the route. Soon after his arrest on Wednesday, Aleem resigned from the post of Punjab local government minister and sent his resignation to the provincial chief minister.

The NAB has been probing Aleem in multiple inquiries, including his offshore company Hexam Investment Overseas Ltd, owning assets beyond his known sources of income and his two housing societies - Park View housing society and River Age Housing Society in Lahore - for the last one year or so. Opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has welcomed the arrest of the minister and said that there should be across the board possibility.

The Punjab government said it would accept the NAB decision and not launch a protest. "Aleem Khan will face the NAB investigation and defend himself in the courts of law," Punjab Information Minister Fayyzul Hasan Chohan said.

The NAB is an independent institution and the government is not interfering in its affairs, Chohan added.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)