Senior Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former interior minister Ahsan Iqbal was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Monday.
The anti-graft watchdog had earlier summoned Iqbal for recording his statement in a multi-billion-rupee case pertaining to the controversial Sports City Project in Narowal.
It was the second time in two months that NAB had summoned the PML-N leader to seek details of his income and expenditures.
According to Dawn, the opposition leader, who is accused of using funds of the federal government and the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) for the sports city, had already replied to a questionnaire given to him by the bureau in connection with the same case.
The PML-N leader had said he had submitted documents related to his income and expenditures to NAB Rawalpindi.
He claimed that he had nothing to do with the case as the project had been launched in 2009 during the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government when he was not a federal minister.
He said that before Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) came to power, the project was 90 per cent complete, but the present government had turned it into ruins.
“In fact NAB should take those people to task who are responsible for the destruction of a national asset,” he added.
The PML-N leader said that when he became a federal minister, the NSC project was in the doldrums and like many other stalled projects, the PML-N government revived it and took it to near completion.
Meanwhile, analysts have expressed concern over the arrest, saying that Iqbal was the sole PML-N leader commenting on former military ruler Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf’s death sentence in the high treason case.
