ISLAMABAD: A National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team has flown to London to meet with the British Home Office officials in relation to the apartments owned by ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s sons Hasan and Hussain, indicating that the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was unable to produce any actionable evidence during its lengthy probe against the Sharif family unlike the media hype that went on for several months.

NAB officials Sultan Nazir and Imran Dogar will be investigating the apartments but earlier the JIT had suggested that it had collected necessary “evidence” after hiring JIT head Wajid Zia’s cousin Akhtar Raja’s law firm Quist Solicitors, said a report.

The JIT’s lawyers in London had written several letters to the Home Office seeking Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) in relation to British national Hasan, who has lived in London for over two decades, and Hussain, who resides there as well as in a Muslim country and whose wife and children are British national.

The JIT’s lawyers had filed these requests through a formal international Letter of Request (LOR). The British government had agreed to provide MLA to the NAB in relation to Hussain and that the National Crime Agency (NCA) will furnish assistance too.

An official said that British authorities were in touch with Pakistani officials over a MLA request. However, he did not comment on the specifics of the case but said that such requests are a routine matter.

It’s understood that at least five banks, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and Home Office had told Pakistani authorities during the JIT probe that it had no concern in relation to the business matters of Hasan and Nawaz Sharif and that all the transactions made from and to his account were done through legal means and no concern were ever raised by the anti-money laundering units working and overseeing transactions in international banks.

While the JIT’s lawyers from London passed to Pakistani authorities as evidence the publicly available record of Hasan and Hussain’s business deals - involving in most cases, buying and selling of properties in central London - nothing illegal was found at the time either by the JIT of its team of lawyers in London. In most of the papers that are available with the NAB, Hasan and Hussain are seen as running their real estate business jointly.