MULTAN: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has violated the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) of 1999 by approving voluntary returns of two suspects even though they were only entitled to opt a plea bargain with the approval of the court.

Advocate Muhammad Naeem Khan argued this during the hearing of a reference by NAB in the Wapda Employees Cooperative Housing Society (WECHS) scam on Wednesday. He is representing Saeed Khan (former WECHS secretary), Muzaffar Ali Abbasi (WECHS president and also former chief executive officer of the Multan Electric and Power Company) and investors Hanif Khokhar and Muhammad Ibrahim.

The defence counsel said that according to section 25 of the NAO an accused can return the assets or gains acquired or made by him in any offense through voluntary return only with prior to the launch of investigation against them but after investigation is authorized, they can return assets or gains only through plea bargain when the NAB chairman refers the case for approval to the court.

He stated that the NAB authorities while violating the NAO, accepted the voluntary return of six accused Wajid Rasool, Farooq Ashraf Rana, Syed Allah Dita, Muhammad Younas Sahu, Sardar Muhammad and Abdul Ghafoor even after the investigation was authorized.

He said NAB received the complaint on Nov 24, 2015 and the first investigation was authorized to investigation officer Muhammad Shahid on June 6, 2016. On June 24, 2016 the investigation was handed over to Mohsin Haroon. In October 2016, the Supreme Court barred the NAB chairman from approving voluntary deals.

He stated that on June 27, 2016 an interim reference was submitted before the NAB court against 13 officials of the WECHS for a Rs1.011 billion fraud in phase III. The reference was filed by Investigation Officer Muhammad Shahid, even though the investigation was already with Mohsin Haroon. Till that time, only Mr Khan was arrested while other accused were arrested after the filing of the interim reference.

He said the NAB authorities not only accepted the voluntary return but also made accused Mr Rasool and Farooq Raza witnesses of the prosecution. A person can either be an accused or a witness.

He said earlier the court had directed the NAB authorities to remove the accused names from the list of witnesses which was done by the NAB. Later on, when the judge was transferred, NAB authorities again included both accused on the witnesses’ list and incumbent judge Abdul Rasheed approved the witnesses’ list.

According to supplementary reference filed on Feb 2, 2017, investor Farooq Ashraf Rana obtained 104 illegal commercial files and sold them to the public while out of 104 files, 80 files were of Khanewal Road where value of commercial plot file was determined Rs1 million per file (two marla) by the price valuation committee while the remaining files were of Matti Tal Road where the value of one file was Rs800,000. Accused also received 389 residential files against sattha (agreement to sell) a land which has yet to be transferred to the society.

Mr Haroon stated in his investigation that the accused submitted the land as guarantee and stated that he would clear his liability of Satha and remaining amount of voluntary return with the issue of these files.

“The accused were arrested where during interrogation he by admitting his guilt applied for voluntary return, which. was approved regarding his liability of commercial plots. He said Rasool got residential files of 900 marlas against 144 kanal land through a fake mutation.

“He returned 132 marla files to the WECHS and also transferred 64 kanals and adjusted his 400 marla files against 64 kanal land. Rasool applied to clear his liability of remaining marlas through voluntary return which was approved by the competent authority,” the investigation report stated.

NAB special prosecutor Murtaza Ferooz says voluntary returns were accepted before the investigation was authorized. When the defence counsel informed the court there is no mentioning of the accused in interim reference and only one accused, Mr Khan, was arrested when interim reference was filed, the prosecutor admitted the fault and said that it was the first case of IO Mohsin Haroon.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2018