Pakistan's accountability watchdog on Thursday arrested a suitable media magnate on alleged corruption charges, within the latest circulate described by way of leading Minister Imran Khan's opponents as an try to gag the media.
Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman, who owns the Jang community of newspapers and Geo tv community, become accused of getting unlawful concessions within the buy of greater than 50 commercial plots in Lahore in 1986, a senior legitimate of the country wide Accountability Bureau (NAB) informed The Telegraph.
He stated Rehman, who become arrested in Lahore, may be produced in a NAB court docket on Friday where the bureau will put across its position on the situation. "Rehman became arrested after he seemed earlier than the NAB in Lahore," the reputable observed on circumstance of anonymity.
The Jang neighborhood denied the NAB allegations in a press release issued to the media in Karachi after the arrest.
"The property turned into purchased from a private celebration 34 years in the past and all evidence of this changed into given to the NAB together with the legal necessities fulfilled like obligation and taxes," it observed.
"NAB threatened newshounds, producers and editors of the group, both directly and in some way throughout the past 18 months to close down the group's tv channels for showing programmes concerning the bureau," the neighborhood claimed without explaing the character or contents of the suggests it aired focusing on the NAB.
"The bureau additionally has through several ability tried to influence us to move gradual, to stop experiences and to do others in its favour at the expense of the complete certainty. we are able to not cease any reporters, producers or anchors from any story that's on benefit and on the equal time will are attempting to encompass the NAB's edition."
A NAB spokesman described the neighborhood's allegations as "pack of lies and baseless," in an announcement, asserting the bureau believes in policy of looking into "instances and not faces."
Former top Minister Khakan Abbasi condemned the govt for what he spoke of gagging the media and curbing freedom of expression in the nation. Senior Pakistan Peoples birthday celebration leader Sherry Rehman and chief of the Pashtun nationalist Awami national celebration, Asfandyar Wali also bitterly criticised premier Imran Khan for victimising the opposition and pointed out media is being gagged under Niazi-NAB nexus.
Freedom of expression gotten smaller extensively in Pakistan after Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf got here to power in July 2018 with media enterprises with executive resorting to censorship and limiting area for dissent.
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