KARACHI: The National Accountability Bureau has filed a reference in the Accountability Court-I (ATC-I) against 84 suspects, including former officers of accounts and finance departments and bankers for alleged misappropriation and money laundering involving Rs3.2 billion government funds.

ATC-I Judge Abdul Ghani Soomro accepted the reference filed by NAB investigating officer Adnan Hafeez Abbasi, who submitted that a supplementary reference would also be filed later.

According to the reference, an inquiry into alleged embezzlement of pension funds by the officers of the District Accounts Office, Hyderabad, and others was conducted after which it was converted into investigation on June 18, 2021.

During the investigation, 5,433 pension bills and 130 refund bills were recovered from the house of former additional district accounts officer (ADAO) Mushtaq Ahmed Shaikh, it said, adding that 1,756 pension bills/vouchers, pertaining to the Muslim Commercial Bank, were signed and processed by Mushtaq Shaikh and other suspects, Muhammad Nazir Bhutto and Allah Bachayo Jatoi.

Embezzlement in pension funds, money-laundering alleged

The probe revealed that said bills carried fake PPO (pension pay order) numbers and were deposited in the bank accounts of the persons other than the names mentioned on the vouchers; and 137 bank accounts of 59 individuals, most of them belonging to suspect Aijaz Dawach, his family members and friends.

All the 137 accounts were operated at three MCB branches during 2010-2017 period, it added.

The investigation further revealed that the total value of these 1,756 fake pension bills/vouchers was Rs1.165 million. These bills were not processed as per the official Accounting Policies and Procedures Manual (APPM) which was applicable to federal and provincial departments.

The banking analysis revealed that another amount to the tune of Rs1.8bn was also credited from government funds.

During the course of investigation, 44 immovable properties of Aijaz Dawach and other suspects and benamis (unknown persons) were unearthed and have been frozen, besides nine vehicles, one company, 411 bank accounts and livestock under the Section 12 of the National Accountability Ordinance-1999.

The probe found that the bank officials in alleged active connivance with the illegal beneficiaries deposited the said bills ignoring the “guarantee clause” which was signed on each pension bill stating that they would be deposited into the “payee’s account” only. After getting these payments cleared from the State Bank, the amount of pension was posted and credited into the accounts of private persons.

It was found that after thorough verification, the SBP debited the Sindh government’s account and transferred the requisite pension funds to the corresponding bank branch, officials of which credited these pension funds into the accounts of private unrelated/unauthorised persons. The bank officials, later on, facilitated withdrawal of the deposited money by the suspects.

The NAB investigation officer claimed that the suspects, including bank officials Junejo Bahadur Ali, Abdul Hafeez Loond, Siraj Ali Mastoi, Azhar Hussain Hingoro and Altaf Gorar, opened fake bank accounts for the purpose of money laundering.

“They in active connivance with private individuals as well as officers of the District Accounts Office, Hyderabad, laundered the money. They layered and placed the crime proceed and managed to deposit pension and other amounts in accounts of unauthorised persons,” it added.

It transpired that suspect Noor Ahmed used his official ID for the release of funds of millions of rupees from the Sindh finance department in favour of the DAO Hyderabad for more than eight years. These additional releases were made without approval of the competent authority and subsequently landed in the hands of ex-ADAO Shaikh and others, who misappropriated them, the probe found, and claimed that during his incumbency as the section officer (budget) in the fiscal years 2015-16 and 2016-17, an amount of Rs4.6bn was paid for pension without any authority. He dishonestly failed to prevent the loss to the government exchequer.

The probe found that suspect Amir Zia Isran, who remained posted as SO in the finance department as well as SO Chief Minister Secretariat from 2009 to 2017, deliberately failed to use his authority to prevent the offence and did not take any measures to get the relevant reports audited and stio over-and-above approvals of the pension amounts.

“He is also involved in taking bribe from Noor Ahmed.”, it alleged.

The probe found that 130 fake refund claims of Agricultural Engineering Department of Rs170,739,734 were sanctioned by ex-ADAOs Saifullah Magsi, Mushtaq Shaikh and Allah Bachayo in favour of private contractors, as they sent these bills to the SBP for clearance with an advice, which neither bore any dairy number nor serial number of the DAO Hyderabad.

The NAB probe stated that it had been established that all the 84 suspects, along with five deceased ones, in connivance with each other misused their authority and embezzled Rs3.2bn from the pension accounts in DAO Hyderabad through fake pension vouchers and fake Agriculture Refund vouchers, causing losses to the exchequer.

They committed offence of corruption and corrupt practices as defined in the Section 9(a)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (xi) and (xii) of the NAO 1999, read with the Section 10 of the Ordinance and the schedule thereto, the reference alleged, adding that they also in connivance with each other allegedly committed the offence of money-laundering as defined under the Section 3 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2022