October 8, 2003	Wednesday	Sha’aban 11, 1424

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PESHAWAR, Oct 7: An accountability court here on Tuesday issued non-bailable arrest warrants of an absconding project director of a Swiss funded project, Small Scale Enterprise Promotion.

The project director, Fasihuzzaman, has not been appearing before the court despite repeated notices. He went into hiding last year after the financial scandal surfaced in the SSEP and the Swiss government requested the National Accountability Bureau to probe the issue.

The accountability judge, Said Maroof Khan, fixed Oct 14 for next hearing and directed the local police to trace the project director and produce him before the court.

The NAB has filed a reference against the accused in which he was charged with misappropriating Rs27.56 million of the project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Last year the Accountability Bureau had arrested a manager coordination of the project, Abdul Manan, in the same case. However, he was released after his plea-bargain was accepted by the NAB’s chairman and he paid Rs6,00,000 to the government.

After preliminary inquiry the NAB found out that the officials were involved in large scale financial irregularities.

The project was initiated within the framework of Agreement on Technical and Scientific Cooperation between the Swiss and Pakistan governments. The SSEP was conceived in 1994 as a pilot project for small enterprise development towards income and employment generation and entrusted to Swiss Contact, an NGO, for implementation.

The development cooperation programme was formed initially for three years (1995-97), later on extended twice up to the year 2001. This was aimed at improving technical skills of construction-related small-scale industries, silk weaving industry, cottage textile industry, etc.