LAHORE: After Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has summoned prime minister secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad on Thursday (today) for his alleged role in awarding a contract to a firm in violation of rules in the Lahore’s Ashiyana-i-Iqbal housing scam.

The NAB directed Mr Fawad to appear before its combined investigation team (CIT) at its Lahore office to record his statement with regard to award and cancellation of the contract in respect of Ashiyana-i-Iqbal housing project launched by the Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC).

An official source said Mr Fawad was the implementation secretary to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in 2013 when he allegedly pressurised the PLDC chief executive officer (CEO) to cancel the contract of M/S Latif and Sons and award it to other firm.

“He had called the project director of Ashiana-i-Iqbal project to his office and ‘threatened’ him (of consequences) and under the garb of allegations of wrongdoings in the award of the contract to M/ s Latif and Sons, he forced him to cancel it,” the source said.

“In his statement to NAB, the PLDC project director said he was present when Mr Fawad called the CEO to his office,” the source said, adding that the prime minister’s secretary was being called for being privy to certain facts of the case and needed to be confronted with the statements of other witnesses.

NAB had grilled Mr Sharif last month for cancelling the award of the project’s contract to successful bidder M/S Chaudhry Latif and Sons and instead obliging M/S Lahore Casa Developers (JV) - a proxy group of M/S Paragon City (Pvt) Limited (which is stated to be developed by Railways Minister Saad Rafique) - thus causing a loss of millions of rupees to the exchequer.

NAB says the chief minister also allegedly directed the PLDC to assign the project to the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), resulting in award of contract to M/s Lahore Casa Developers (JV), thus causing a loss of Rs715 million and ultimately failure of the project. Similarly, the chief minister had allegedly directed the PLDC to award consultancy services of the project to M/s Engineering Consultancy Services Punjab for Rs192 million, whereas the actual cost was Rs35 million as quoted by Nespak.

The CIT has also summoned Mr Sharif’s ‘blue-eyed officer’ former LDA director general Ahad Khan Cheema on Friday in the same case with ‘detailed statement regarding award of the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project which was entrusted to him by the chief minister and purchase of 32 kanals at Mouza Tedha Cantt Lahore. NAB warned him that failing to comply with this notice may entail penal consequences.

NAB had launched investigation into the scam November last. It had got details of the contract agreement between the PLDC and M/s Anhui Construction Engineering Group owned by Director of Paragon Exchange Ali Sajjad, M/s Bismillah Engineering Company of CEO of Paragon City Nadeem Zia and M/s Sparco Group.

NAB initiated the probe after receiving a number of complaints regarding ‘illegal deal’ involving 3,000 public kanals between the PLDC and the companies.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2018