LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday grilled prime minister secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad for his alleged role in awarding a contract to a firm in violation of rules in Lahore’s Ashiana-i-Iqbal housing scheme.

In a related development, Fawad’s former boss Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has submitted a reply to NAB’s questionnaire in this case.

An official told Dawn that a NAB’s combined investigation team put questions to Mr Fawad for more than an hour. “He responded to questions but could not bring with him relevant record which he promised to submit at the earliest,” the official said.

Mr Fawad was the implementation secretary to CM 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 is accused of calling the project director of Ashiana-i-Iqbal project to his office and ‘threatening’ him (with 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.

Meanwhile, Shahbaz submitted a reply to NAB’s questionnaire in this case. He was accused of 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.

The CM 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.

On his appearance before NAB last month, Mr Sharif had promised to submit the reply to NAB’s queries in the project.

On the other hand, former LDA director general Ahad Khan Cheema did not appear before NAB in the same case. He was directed to come up with a detailed statement regarding award of the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project which was entrusted to him by the chief minister and purchase of 32 kanals land at Mouza Tedha Cantt Lahore.

NAB warned him that failing to comply with this notice may entail penal consequences.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2018