NAB, EC moved against Shaukat, Pervaiz Elahi : Flour crisis
By Amjad Mahmood
LAHORE, Jan 21: The PML-N has moved the National Accountability Bureau and the Election Commission of Pakistan against former prime minister Shaukat Aziz, former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Elahi, a federal minister and an adviser for “creating an artificial shortage of wheat in order to mint money”.
Party spokesman M. Siddiqul Farooq, who has filed the references, said former food and agriculture minister Sikandar Bosan and former adviser to prime minister on finance Dr Salman Shah were named as co-accused in the references.
Distributing copies of the references at a press conference here on Monday, he alleged that the “ill-gotten” riches were being used for electioneering of the PML-Q, but both the NAB and ECP were ignoring the wrongdoing.
He demanded that the NAB and ECP authorities should immediately order filing of cases against the PML-Q leaders and placing their names on the ECL to prevent their escape.
Demanding return of the ex-prime minister through the Interpol, he said cases should be instituted against him for “defrauding” the nation of billions of rupees in the wheat scandal.
Mr Farooq presented as evidence an interview of Pervaiz Elahi with a local daily, in which the former chief minister had “confessed” that Aziz and then industries minister Jehangir Tareen had first exported wheat at $200 per ton and then imported the commodity at $450 per ton last year.
Mr Tareen hit back and told the same paper that Pervaiz Elahi himself was responsible for the crisis, he added.
Chaudhry Pervaiz also indirectly admitted to selling 12.5 million maunds of wheat from the provincial godowns and thus causing a loss of Rs222 million to the exchequer, he said.
He said that the PML-Q leader also indirectly confessed that some people in the government had hoarded 4.5 million tons of wheat and pocketed millions of rupees by selling it at inflated rates.
“Pervaiz Elahi’s statement that he failed to move against the wheat hoarders and smugglers is in fact his confession that he was equally involved in the scandal.”
Mr Farooq termed a white lie the former chief minister’s claim that President Musharraf had taken steps against wheat smuggling and hoarding and said that so far no such action had been reported from any part of the country.
