Ex-NAB officer’s son says interned for Broadsheet-linked law firm without monetary gain

• National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecutor-general Farouk Adam Khan's son speaks to Geo News after General Amjad's witness statement goes public
• Says he did an internship with Broadsheet-linked Orchard Solicitors in London
• The internship was for work experience and unpaid, he said

LONDON: The son of former National Accountability Bureau (NAB) prosecutor-general Farouk Adam Khan says he worked with the Broadsheet-linked Orchard Solicitors in London for work experience in 2000, but didn’t receive monetary benefits from the law firm.

Omer Farouk Adam, the retired Pakistan Navy officer, told Geo News he did an internship with Orchard Solicitors “but there was nothing secret about it and the internship was without monetary benefits”.

He said: “It was a regular limited period internship undertaken with many other law students.”

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Omer said that General (retired) Syed Amjad’s insinuations in his 2015 affidavit about his father before the London High Court judge in the Broadsheet vs NAB case are “not only malicious but a sign of a weak man desperately trying to hide skeletons”.

Omer spoke after Geo News made public the witness statement of General Amjad, the NAB chairperson under Pervez Musharraf, in which he alleged that Farouk worked for Broadsheet as a consultant after leaving NAB and it came to his attention later on that his son was employed by Mr David Orchard, who along with Dr Pepper, were legal advisers to Trouvons.

The ex-NAB officer's son currently works as a lawyer in Pakistan and has studied and worked in London. He said there was nothing secretive or hidden about his work experience with David Orchard’s law firm in 2000.

“The statement made by Farouk as to the sequence of events leading up to the signing of the Broadsheet Agreement (also called “Assets Recovery Agreement) was absolutely correct. May be Mr Farouk Adam Khan, if alive, would now have changed his opinion about Mr General Amjad,” said Omer.

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During their witness statement before the London arbitration judge, General Amjad and Farouk, who were once close associates, clashed with each other over the events of 2000 onwards while NAB and Broadsheet were tied in the agreement till 2003.

Farouk, who later provided consultancy to Broadsheet, pinned the responsibility on General Amjad for signing the agreement and being “satisfied” after visiting the Broadsheet LLC office in Colorado USA in April 2000.

Farouk also told the court that he had done all due diligence and obtained all approvals from the relevant ministries and placed the final agreement before General Amjad once the Joint Secretary had given go ahead for the agreement to be finalised.

He said NAB was wrong to terminate the contract arbitrarily and that NAB didn’t let Broadsheet work properly.

In his 2010 affidavit, Farouk alleged Nawaz Sharif and his colleagues had amassed wealth of an estimated £1 billion in foreign bank accounts. But in 2015, he appealed to the court to replace his affidavit with a new and final affidavit, withdrawing allegations and bringing it on record that there was no proof that Nawaz had amassed wealth abroad and that the figures quoted in his 2010 affidavit were speculative and based on rumours and gossip.

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General Amjad disagreed. He told the court that Farouk's affidavit of 2010 that Broadsheet was working well to trace assets abroad came as a “shock” to him.

General Amjad told the court: “As was as I was aware, Broadsheet had not actively or conscientiously tried to fulfil any, let alone all, of its obligations under the Broadsheet Agreement.”