LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore on Wednesday arrested six more suspects in Bin Alam property scam.

According to the NAB, it arrested Sultan Mehmood, Nadeem Khan, Chaudhry Waseem, Mian Faisal, Musawir Hussain and Momin Azhar for their alleged involvement in cheating the public at large and criminal breach of trust which caused financial loss to the tune of Rs150 million to the people in investment in the fake housing project.

The NAB said it launched probe against the Bin Alam Developers on receiving complaints of cheating and defrauding public by its owners Kazim Alam, Nazim Alam and Muhammad Asif Alam who were arrested in March. They are on physical remand in NAB’s custody.

Officials say company’s owners were already in custody

It said the suspects lured the public to invest in the housing projects which actually did not exist on ground. The said company was collecting huge funds in the name of projects even without acquiring formal approval from the Lahore Development Authority (LDA).

“More than 890 affected people with claims of Rs930 million have so far been approached by the NAB Lahore for compensation of their financial loss caused by owners and dealers of Bin Alam projects,” said the Bureau.

It further said during inquiry proceedings that the owners had authorised 12 dealers for booking of plots and sale of registration forms of the fake societies/projects. “After collecting evidence, the NAB Lahore arrested six property dealers of Bahria Town namely SSM Estate, SAM Marketing, PZ Estate, OLK Marketing, AP Estate and BA Estate who have been found playing actively in alleged connivance with the owners of Bin Alam Developers. The said dealers allegedly got illegal benefit through sale of registration forms/membership forms and plot files of these bogus projects of M/s Bin Alam Developers whereby gained illegal pecuniary benefits from the same.”

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2019