ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly has submitted several complaints to NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq regarding slow pace of investigations by the National Accountability Bureau in some important cases like the National Logistics Cell (NLC) scam and the Sher Shah bridge collapse.
PAC chairman and leader of opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah wrote several letters to the speaker complaining that NAB was doing nothing in these cases despite repeated instructions of the PAC.
He said the cases had been taken up by the PAC and NAB had been asked to apprise the committee of the outcome of investigations into these scandals.
Know more: NAB blames ex-PM for backlog of cases
“In his letters to the NA speaker, Shah sahib sought Mr Sadiq’s help to press NAB to expedite its investigations in some of the important cases referred by the PAC,” Waqar Gilani, media coordinator to the PPP leader, told Dawn on Sunday.
He said the PAC had written several letters to NAB and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to pursue different cases, but the two organisations did not cooperate. “In some cases, the PAC also gave deadlines to NAB and FIA to investigate these matters ... but the two organisations failed to meet the deadlines,” he said.
A source close to the NA speaker confirmed that the speaker’s office had received several letters in which the PAC chairman had expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of NAB.
When contacted, NAB spokesman Nawazish Ali Asim declined to offer any comments on the issue.
However, a senior NAB official told Dawn that a former federal secretary and relative of the NA speaker was also facing six different NAB references.
NLC CASE: During the tenure of the PPP government, the-then PAC chairman and incumbent Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had told reporters after a meeting of the committee that the PAC had completed its work on the Rs4 billion NLC scam, but military authorities had taken all investigation reports/papers into their custody from the PAC as they were also investigating the case and wanted to decide the case by themselves.
The scandal was related to investment of NLC funds in the stock exchange business from 2004 to 2008.
According to the information presented before the PAC in 2012, NLC bosses had made heavy investment in the stock exchange between 2004 and 2008 in violation of government rules. Besides borrowing money from commercial banks at high mark-up, they had allegedly used pensioners’ money for the business.
The army has so far not made public the outcome of the investigation into the case.
ROYAL PALM AND COUNTRY CLUB: In October 2013, NAB had summoned three retired military generals in connection with the investigation of Royal Palm and Country Club case. They included the then railways minister retired Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, retired Lt Gen Saeeduz Zafar and retired Maj Gen Hamid Hassan Butt. They were accused of being involved in leasing out Pakistan Railway’s 141 kanals land to a private club at throwaway prices in Lahore in 2001.
Two civilians — Khursheed Ahmad Khan, former member of finance of the PR, and Iqbal Samad Khan, former general manager of Operations of PR, — were also allegedly involved in the case. The case has been discussed or investigated at different levels since 2007, but nothing has come out of it so far. The land deal reportedly caused a loss of Rs10 billion to the national exchequer.
SHER SHAH BRIDGE CASE: The bridge collapsed on Sept 1, 2007, in a busy area in Karachi. Five people were reportedly killed and dozens injured in the incident. The reason was said to be poor construction, substandard material and design fault of the bridge.
The former chairman of the National Highway Authority, retired Maj Gen Farrukh Javed, is one of the accused in the case.
Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2015
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