ISLAMABAD, Oct 21: Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique has requested the National Accountability Bureau to reinvestigate scams related to Pakistan Railways, including a shady deal struck during the days of retired Gen Pervez Musharraf in 2001 for setting up the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club on 141 acres of PR land in Lahore.He said he had written a letter to the NAB headquarters and urged NAB chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry to reinvestigate major scams in Pakistan Railways.

The alleged corruption in PR referred to the NAB include the sale of scrap worth millions of rupees at throwaway prices, purchase of different items for 69 locomotives and allotment of railways land for establishment of Royal Palm Country Club.

Mr Rafique said he wanted fresh probe into the fraudulent deals because his ministry was striving to revive the crippling railways and mitigate losses caused by such deals.

He said there were several land scams but allotment of 141 acres of land for the Royal Palm Country Club which caused a loss of over Rs10 billion to the exchequer topped them. Three retired generals were allegedly involved in the deal.

The minister said the management of the club had not been paying the lease amount to PR for the past three years.

The NAB investigated the scam in 2011-12 and managed to recover some money from the owners of the club. But the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly, in a meeting on Sept 14, 2012, did not accept the recovery as adequate and called for cancellation of the land lease agreement.

When contacted, NAB spokesman Ramzan Sajid confirmed that the Railways Minister had contacted the NAB headquarters seeking reinvestigation into several scams in PR, including the land deal.

“The NAB chairman has already set up a committee to deal with all pending cases, including the cases of PR,” he said.

The PR land deal has been discussed or investigated at different levels since 2007 and last year NAB was said to be quite close to filing a reference against people allegedly involved in the Royal Palm deal, including three retired generals. The three recorded their statement before NAB investigators last year. But NAB did not file the reference.

A report issued by the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Railways on the allotment of PR land for setting up the club revealed a number of financial and administrative irregularities and recommended prosecution of all members of PR’s executive committee.

The report said the land had been allotted at a nominal price and its utilisation charges were reduced to only Rs4 from Rs52.43 per square yard.