LAHORE, April 14: The PPP has got “irrefutable documentary evidence” that the government is trying to cover up its role in buying oil from Iraq under the oil-for-food programme worth $500 million, paying over $4 million in surcharge to the Saddam regime.

The claim has been made by ARD deputy information secretary Munir Ahmad Khan in a letter to envoys of the US, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Canada, Holland and Denmark and secretary-general of the Commonwealth.

According to the letter, three Pakistani companies — M/s A & A Services, M/s B. C. International (Private) Limited, and M/s Oil and Gas Services Group — were allowed to buy oil from Iraq under the oil-for-food programme.

The letter says the companies registered with the UN had to pay surcharge to the Iraqi oil company, Souma. The three companies selling oil to Pakistan also paid this surcharge.

According to documents available with the PPP, the following amounts of oil were lifted by the companies and surcharge paid:

i) The A & A Services lifted 100,000 barrels of oil for $14 million for which it paid $240,000 in surcharge.

ii) The B. C. International lifted over eight million barrels for $174 million after paying a surcharge of over $1.4 million.

iii) The Oil and Gas Services Group lifted over 14 million barrels valuing over $300 million after paying $2.6 million in commissions.

The amounts of surcharge were deposited in the Jordan National Bank, between March 2001 and October 2002. One deposit was also made in Fransabank.

In a bid to cover up the scam and the misdeeds of the military regime, alleged the letter, the National Accountability Bureau recently claimed that a non-Pakistani company involving non- residents and associated with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had paid commission in the oil-for-food programme.

The letter said Ms Bhutto had already stated that she was unaware of such payments having been made. The PPP has also maintained that having failed to find involvement of the PPP government in corruption, the NAB was overextending its legal reach to investigate a private citizen in exile.

The PPP called for a parliamentary probe into the scam of the Pakistani companies to identify their association with the regime. The party has noted that the NAB had failed to investigate corruption as it was involved in political persecution.

A desperate NAB was now seeking to victimise Ms Bhutto through false accusations relating to her period in exile to keep its propaganda machine moving, the letter concluded.