Omer Farouk Adam, son of ex-prosecutor general of the National Accountability Bureau Farouk Adam Khan, says that he worked for a Broadsheet-linked firm in the 2000s as an intern without any monetary benefits.
Recently, ex-NAB chairman Gen (r) Syed Amjad alleged that Farouk Adam Khan worked for a law firm connected to the asset recovery firm as a consultant after leaving NAB and his son Omer too was employed by David Orchard, who along with Dr Pepper, were legal advisers to Broadsheet, a report in Geo News said.
Responding to the statement, Farouk Adam Khan told Geo that he did work with Broadsheet, but not for money. “There was nothing secret about it and the internship was without monetary benefits,” he was quoted as saying. “It was a regular limited period internship undertaken with many other law students.”
Amjad and Farouk had been close associates once, but in 2015, both made statements against each other in a London court over the signing of the agreement with Broadsheet. Amjad accused Farouk of working for Broadsheet and getting his son hired as well, while Farouk said Amjad was “satisfied” with the contract signed in 2000.
He said NAB didn’t let Broadsheet work properly, adding that the agreement was signed with the firm after due diligence and Amjad’s approval.
NAB-BROADSHEET CONTRACT:
Pakistan paid Broadsheet, an asset recovery firm registered in the Isle of Man, Rs4.65bn after the NAB broke an agreement with it three years after it was signed in 2000.
After its formation in 1999 by then military dictator Pervez Musharraf, NAB approached Broadsheet to recover overseas assets of at least 200 Pakistanis, particularly the Sharif family. However, the deal fell through in 2003, with NAB saying that the recovery firm had stopped investigations; Broadsheet had accused NAB of hampering its probe to locate the offshore assets of Pakistanis.
The broken accord was the start of an 18-year-long legal battle between the two parties. In 2008, NAB reached a settlement with a former Broadcast LLC official, Jerry James. The bureau paid at least $1.5million to James to settle the case even though the company was being liquidated and the liquidator was not a party to the deal.
Though NAB claimed it had reached a settlement with Broadsheet, the firm said James had nothing to do with it at the time of the signing of the agreement. The money paid to James didn’t reach the original Broadsheet, its CEO had claimed and filed a case in a UK court for arbitration in the matter in 2012.
The UK judge decided the matter in favour of Broadsheet, the claimant. It said Broadsheet LLC was entitled to recover damages for the wrongful repudiation of the ARA [asset recovery agreement]. The award declared that James had no authority from the claimant after March 2005 to enter into a settlement agreement with NAB. The judge said the deal was “wrongful and deliberate to financially hurt the original Broadsheet LLC, Isle of Man”.
The court held that while negotiating with the fraudulent company, NAB representative Ahmer Bilal Soofi was aware that the original company was in liquidation, and he signed the wrongful deal knowingly.
Finally, the court ordered NAB to pay $21.58m plus interest to Broadsheet LLC in damages over the breach of the agreement. Due to interest rates, the award amount reached $28.7 million by December 2020.
