LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Tuesday arrested former senator Ammar Ahmad Khan, also a son of late senator Gulzar Ahmad Khan, after the Lahore High Court withdrew interim pre-arrest bail earlier granted to him in the Pak-Arab housing scheme scam.

The NAB had filed a petition for the cancellation of the bail granted to Khan saying the suspect did not cooperate with it to compensate the people defrauded in the scam.

A prosecutor argued that the custody of the suspect was required to recover the looted money of the affectees.

A division bench headed by Justice Syed Shehbaz Ali Rizvi observed that the court had granted bail to the suspect after he undertook to cooperate with the NAB. The judge further observed that a large number of people had been suffering due to the suspect.

The bench withdrew the bail granting order and a team of the NAB arrested the former senator, who was the chief executive officer of the housing scheme.

The bureau alleged that the suspect denied plots to people despite receiving money from them. It said the society defrauded the public at large by selling files more than the available plots.

It alleged that the former senator collected Rs10 billion from people who purchased the files of Pak-Arab Society Phase-II, which was also not an approved project by Lahore Development Authority.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2022