ISLAMABAD, Oct 27: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has accepted five plea-bargaining applications filed in the past few weeks, involving an amount of Rs197 million.

A NAB official said the amount for which commitments had been made in a month’s time was in addition to Rs1.156 billion recovered in 78 cases of plea bargaining by the NAB.

Out of Rs197 million, he said, an amount of Rs160 million had been committed by Shamrez Khan alone, who had been involved in massive misappropriation of wheat storages in connivance with the food department.

According to the official, district management group official Taj Muhammad Afridi has committed to pay Rs20 million, which the accused accumulated beyond his known means.

He said the NAB had made Sheikh Muhammad Ijaz commit Rs2.2 million, which he had received illegally with the connivance of Wapda, the land revenue department and the land acquisition collector, Attock.

Former NWFP minister Ayub Tanoli, who had been arrested on the charge of corruption for accumulating assets beyond his known means, had offered to pay Rs5.5 million, he added.

A wine merchant from Sindh, Manohar R. Acharia, was taken into custody on the charge of illegally importing liquor from different breweries on fake permits during the year 1197-98.

These consignments were never entered in excise record and taxes and duties to the tune of Rs26 million were evaded.

The accused agreed to pay Rs13.2 for plea bargaining. The committee later accepted his plea bargaining on the condition that he would pay Rs8.2 million within one year and give security for the rest of the payment.

A plea-bargaining appeal of Muhammad Alam Arain, who was involved in a scandal of land acquisition for the projects of Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD), canal in the area of Badin and Sanghar, was rejected by the NAB.

The accused with the connivance of 22 officials made illegal payments for the land, which were never acquired for LBOD project in Sanghar.

They received payments on the basis of forged or bogus documents and caused a loss of four million rupees.

The accused forwarded a plea-bargaining application through the court, which rejected it, as the amount offered by him was far less than what had actually been swindled.