KARACHI: Some of the over 56,000 files which the Federal Investigation Agency had seized from the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) offices a week ago have been returned after a new standard operating procedure evolved between the FIA and the Sindh government, officials said on Saturday.

“The FIA has started returning the record which it had seized during raids on the KMC headquarters in the Civic Centre,” said a spokesman for the provincial government, adding that the Sindh government would assist the FIA in its efforts aimed at curbing the corrupt practices.

Lately, the provincial government had warned the FIA that it might initiate criminal and civil proceedings against the FIA officials if the seized land record was not returned within three days.


Sindh govt, FIA agree to cooperate in drive against corrupt practices


Sources in the Sindh government told Dawn that more than 56,000 files, most of which were related to land and property records, had been seized by the FIA during raids on the land department of the KMC offices.

The issue involved the infamous ‘China-cutting’ scam, in which vast amenity land had been illegally subdivided and sold for commercial purposes.

The sources said a senior FIA official on Friday came to see Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and briefed him that most of the record his department had seized were ‘bogus files’ which were prepared as a part of widespread corrupt practices in the municipality.

However, the original files, which the FIA seized, would be returned to the authorities concerned, he added.

The Sindh government spokesman said the FIA authorities could get the record it required in future from the city commissioner or the KMC administrator instead of raiding government offices as it did.

The FIA government would also seek Sindh government assistance if it wanted to take custody of any government functionary allegedly involved in some cases of ‘mega corruption’, said a senior official.

“We’ll completely support the FIA in its effort to curb corruption for which if it needs to arrest any government functionary for investigation, we’ll assist it accordingly,” he said.

He said there was no ‘bad blood’ between the FIA and the provincial government, but earlier this week, the local government department had written a letter to the FIA director stating that they raided offices of the KMC land department on July 24 with ‘no prior information and after office hours’. It said the KMC was not part of the federal government thus did not come into the FIA ambit.The letter stated that the FIA the by confiscating the entire original record of KMC’s land department from the ‘10th floor’ of the Civic Centre committed an ‘arbitrary exercise’ and ‘abuse of power’.

The FIA had previously said that it seized the land record to probe the land scam with proper procedure and added that any effort to ‘hamper’ the probe were likely to ‘benefit’ the criminals involved in this land scam.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2015

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