A Qatari prince's letter said Nawaz Sharif's father had willed his Gulf profits to a grandson, and courts fought for six years over four Park Lane flats

Four flats at Avenfield House on Park Lane were owned by Nielsen Enterprises and Nescoll Limited, companies registered in the British Virgin Islands in 1994 and 1993. Mossack Fonseca records published in the Panama Papers named Maryam Safdar, daughter of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, as their owner, and showed that in 2007 Deutsche Bank Geneva lent up to $13.8 million to companies including these two, with the London properties as collateral. In November 2016 the family's lawyer gave the Supreme Court a letter from Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar's former prime minister. It said Sharif's father, Mian Muhammad Sharif, invested about 12 million dirhams in the Al Thani real estate business around 1980 and had said in his will that his grandson Hussain Nawaz should get the investment and its returns. It said the flats' certificates were handed to Hussain when accounts were settled in 2006. On 28 July 2017 the Supreme Court unanimously disqualified Nawaz Sharif from office. On 6 July 2018 an accountability court sentenced him to 10 years and an £8 million fine, and Maryam to seven years and £2 million, for assets beyond known income. On 29 September 2022 the Islamabad High Court acquitted Maryam, saying ownership had not been established. On 29 November 2023 it acquitted Nawaz Sharif. Status: both acquitted in the Avenfield case.