ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has decided to proceed against its own chief Qamar Zaman Chaudhry in the light of the Supreme Court’s recent verdict on the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam case, DawnNews quoted sources as saying.
On Friday, the court in its ruling ordered action against Chaudhry for abusing his authority as a civil servant and also incriminated a whole bunch of top bureaucrats, some of them still serving, as well as a senior Pakistan Peoples Party politician responsible for the crime warranting cases against them in relation to the case. The damning indictment came in a 52-page detailed verdict in the Rs1.68 billion NICL scam as well as contempt of court charges against senior government officials, including the NAB chairman.
According to sources, after the apex court’s decision on the multi-billion-rupee National scam, acting chairman NAB Saeed Ahmad Sargana has constituted a joint probe committee headed by Director General (DG) operations Zahir Shah to pursue the case.
The probe committee would also include representatives of the police and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).
In the light of the court’s directive, the committee would proceed against NAB chairman Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, former commerce minister Amin Fahim, former tax ombudsman Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, Nargis Sethi, Khushnood Lashari, Salman Ghani, former DG Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Malik Muhammad Iqbal and ex-secretary establishment Ismail Qureshi.
News of corruption in the NICL first came to light when its chairman Ayaz Khan Niazi, four other officials of the company and their accomplices were charged with violating rules in the procurement of 10 acres in a Korangi area which caused huge financial losses to the national exchequer.
