ISLAMABAD, May 12: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has expressed deep concern over jurisdiction issue that had restricted the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) from auditing the accounts of National Bank (NBP). The bank recently wrote off Rs4 billion loans allegedly to some political families.

The PAC decided to meet Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and persuade him to amend the rules of finance ministry in this regard. The AGP Younas Khan on Thursday informed the PAC that jurisdiction related hurdles had made them helpless and despite a number of attempts they were not allowed to audit the NBP accounts.

Earlier, the committee constituted by the PAC could not solve the issues until the finance ministry overhauled its rules and empowered the AGP to audit the NBP’s accounts, the AGP maintained.

“The NBP’s management is of the view that the bank fall under the Banking Act and could not be audited by AGP”, Younas Khan said, adding “we are also concerned about reports of the Rs4billion write off”.

PAC Member, MNA Syed Qurban Ali Shah, said it was not for the first time that NBP wrote off loans. In the recent past, it had written off Rs18 billion. The AGP could not initiate auditing of its accounts despite the fact that the government held shares in the NBP and had opened accounts there.

He feared that National Bank could meet the same disastrous end experienced by the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan (IDBP) after the government’s failure to detect corrupt elements and act on time.

Member PAC and PML-N MNA, Ch Nisar Ali Khan said some vested interests were making efforts to further curtail the already very limited powers of the Auditor General of Pakistan.

“These banks always write off millions of rupees loans to those people from whose nostrils money always ooze out but put behind the bars poor farmers for not paying back a Rs12,000 loan,” Mr Khan said.

He said the time had come to decide collectively to whom the tax-payer money belong: to the industrialists or politicians or the people of Pakistan. He also suggested extensive internal meetings between the AGP and PAC to sort out the NBP issue.

The committee, chaired by ruling party MNA, Malik Allahyar, directed the management of the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan (IDBP) to prepare a list of its defaulters and present it before PAC as soon as possible besides coming up with a time frame for the recovery of the outstanding money.

“The IDBP has failed to recover money from those who were declared defaulters in 1970s when people of my age were college students. This loan recovery process is taking decades as people from the management and board of directors support defaulters in a majority of the cases”, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan observed.

POLITICAL FAMILY: The committee directed the IDBP to investigate the whereabouts of its former members of the board of directors for sanctioning loans to M/s Rehan Woolen Mills owned by former National Assembly Speaker, Gauhar Ayub and his other family members. The PAC directed that the BoD members should be tried in the courts of law for sanctioning loans for an unviable project.