ISLAMABAD, Aug 10: An opposition senator on Friday asked a minister in-charge of the cabinet division why the National Accounability Bureau was not allowed to pursue an investigation into the sugar crisis.
The explanation was sought through a call-attention notice submitted by Senator Sadia Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to the Senate Secretariat. She drew the attention of the minister in-charge of the cabinet division to the explanation given in the report submitted by NAB to the Supreme Court on Thursday.
The NAB report blamed eight sitting ministers and some party leaders responsible for sugar hoarding which, “coupled with the government’s soft policy initiative, created a sugar crisis and price hike over the past three years”.
The report also cites middlemen, sugar industry’s corrupt practices, tax evasion and the food minister’s action of inducing farmers to demand higher sugarcane prices as reasons for the continuing crisis.
It says these players and factors took advantage of lower domestic sugarcane output which, coupled with higher international prices, devastated the common man’s budget by increasing the commodity’s price from Rs21 per kilogramme in February 2005 to Rs45 by the end of January 2006.
The SC bench, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and Justice Javed Buttar, had ordered the NAB to submit its report about its incomplete inquiry into the sugar scam on the request of People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) Senator Enver Baig.
Interestingly, the report not only mentions the names of cabinet members, but also PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, his brother and former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and PPP leader Asif Zardari. The report held Jehangir Tareen, Humayun Akhtar (a cousin of Humayun Akhtar), chief of the ruling PML Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, chief whip Nasrullah Dareshak, Anwer Cheema, Mian Azhar and Erra chief Mian Altaf Saleem responsible for hoarding almost 70 per cent of the 317,000 tons of sugar.
According to the NAB, it was forced to wind up its investigation and it had to issue a press release about the winding up of the probe when the players created an impression that the investigation was fuelling the sugar crisis.
DENIAL: Nawaz Sharif's family has categorically denied its involvement in the sugar scam of 2006 and before as was alleged in a report submitted by the National Accountability Bureau to the Supreme Court on Thursday.
Talking to Dawn, Salman Shehbaz Sharif asserted that his family had neither been involved in the sugar stock holding nor in the import of sweetner.
“In 2006, we had invited the Monopoly Control Authority (MCA) to check our sugar mills stocks, but the offer was never responded to,” he claimed.
He said the family never indulged in any kind of business malpractice or hoarding.
