ISLAMABAD: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal on Thursday directed the civic administrations of the twin cities to take action against illegal housing societies.

Mr Iqbal was speaking during a meeting at NAB headquarters to review the overall performance of the bureau, particularly NAB’s performance regarding action taken against illegal private and cooperative housing societies in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The meeting was informed that NAB has tasked the relevant departments – such as the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration, Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and Capital Development Authority (CDA) – to act against illegal housing societies and publish the names of such societies in newspapers and on their websites.

According to an official, there are over a hundred illegal private and cooperative housing societies in Islamabad and dozens in Rawalpindi. Hundreds of people have invested billions in such projects.

There are 109 illegal housing societies, agro-farming schemes in the capital city, dozens in Rawalpindi

The CDA has declared 109 housing and agro-farming schemes in the capital illegal, and according to media reports there are 16 societies operating illegally in zones II and III (southeast Islamabad), and E-11.

There are 64 such societies in Zone IV (southwest Islamabad) and 29 in Zone V (south Islamabad).

There were barely over a dozen illegal housing societies in the capital a decade ago.

Their proliferation since then has exposed the poor performance of the city’s administrators and NAB as well.

According to a NAB spokesperson, the bureau has played an effective role in ensuring that the names of illegal societies are available on the CDA, ICT and RDA websites.

Immediately after taking over his responsibilities as the head of the bureau, the NAB chairman had directed that all the inquiries and investigations into private and cooperative housing societies be brought to their logical conclusion.

During Thursday’s meeting, Mr Iqbal also sought a report on actions taken against private and cooperative housing societies by the NAB Rawalpindi region director general.

He emphasised his resolve to take action against illegal housing societies and recover stolen funds from defaulting societies, to return the savings of victims of all illegal private and cooperative housing societies in accordance with the law.

He added that strict action would also be taken against NAB officers who are found guilty of negligence in the drive against illegal societies.

Mr Iqbal also urged the public to invest only in legal housing ventures, after thoroughly scrutinising the legal status of societies to avoid fraud in the initial stages.

Al-Hamra Society

NAB Rawalpindi recovered Rs5 million from the management of the abortive Al-Hamra private housing society in Zone VI and returned it to Shaheen Foundation Managing Director Air Vice Marshall Mohammad Jamshad Khan.

NAB recovered Rs1.8 billion from Al-Hamra and Eden Builders, who had failed to hand over plots to members of the Shaheen Foundation.

In the initial phase, Rs366m were returned to affected members of the foundation, followed by Rs50m in the next phase, then Rs117.5m and Rs137m in the fourth phase.

NAB Director General Rawalpindi Irfan Naeem Mangi said that NAB had a zero tolerance policy for corruption, and the bureau’s anti-corruption campaign was carried widely to raise awareness and prevent corruption.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2018