An anti-corruption court in Lahore on Thursday acquitted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shahbaz in the Ramzan Sugar Mills case. The verdict was announced by Judge Sardar Iqbal Dogar after being reserved earlier in the week.
The case revolved around allegations that PM Shehbaz, during his tenure as Punjab chief minister, misused public funds for the construction of a sludge carrier to benefit Ramzan Sugar Mills, owned by his sons.
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had filed a reference on February 18, 2019, accusing Shehbaz of approving a 10-kilometer sludge carrier in Chiniot, which allegedly caused a loss of Rs213 million to the national exchequer.
The case was reopened in November 2023 after amendments introduced by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government were overturned.
Initially indicted in 2019, Shehbaz and Hamza had applied for the case’s transfer in September 2024, following the Supreme Court’s decision to restore amendments to the National Accountability Ordinance 1999.
The case was later shifted from the accountability court to an anti-corruption court in October 2024, as NAB could not prosecute offenses involving amounts below Rs500 million.
During the hearings, their lawyer, Amjad Pervez, argued that the sludge carrier was built for public use, not exclusively for Ramzan Sugar Mills. He also highlighted that the complainant had denied making corruption allegations against Shehbaz and Hamza.
Notably, in November 2023, Shehbaz and 10 others were acquitted in the Ashiana-e-Iqbal Housing Scheme reference after NAB found no evidence of corruption or misuse of authority.
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