MUZAFFARABAD, Sept 8: The AJK government has appointed a senior officer to probe into an alleged embezzlement of over Rs50 million provided by a Saudi philanthropist for distribution among the victims of Oct 2005 earthquake.Abdul Rashid Malick, secretary of the law, justice and parliamentary affairs department, has been directed to conduct the probe and present a report within 60 days, according to a notification issued here on Saturday.The printed date on the notification is Aug 6 but it was signed by the issuing authority (section officer inquiry wing) on Sept 6, exactly after one month.

The inquiry, according to the notification, was ordered on the basis of a call attention notice tabled by Mr Tahir Khokhar in the Azad Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly on April 6.

The inquiry officer has to probe that (if) “some influential persons had illegally opened accounts in the name of widows and handicapped persons in a bank in Mirpur and an amount of Rs50 million, released by a Saudi NGO for earthquake victims, was transferred from the Citibank Islamabad to that bank (for such persons) and drawn.”

Though the notification did not mention any names, sources said that the whole issue was dealt by AJK Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Zulfiqar Abbasi against whom a senior lawyer had already lodged a complaint in the AJK Ehtesab Bureau, accusing him of favouritism, dishonesty and misappropriation of charity fund.

According to a list which Mr Khokhar had also annexed with his call attention notice, the charitable money -- meant for the widows, orphans and handicapped persons in the entire affected zone -- was dished out to 635 persons and almost 80 per cent of them belonged to Mr Abbasi’s tribe in the Dhirkot tehsil.

A handful of recipients elsewhere were benefited for their political and bureaucratic links. Some of them, related to a grade-21 bureaucrat, own vast tracts of land in the Jhelum Valley.

The list also revealed that Mr Abbasi had favoured more than two dozen members of his family and as many in-laws.

The Ehtesab Bureau, sources said, had been told that many beneficiaries were neither widows nor handicapped but were wrongly shown as such to justify the payment, Rs86,410 for each individual. Some were said to be doing jobs in the Middle East.

Mr Abbasi, however, disputes the right of any individual or organisation to question the selection of beneficiaries and the process of distribution.

“It was neither Zakat money nor it belonged to any government or non-governmental organisation. It was personal donation of a Saudi philanthropist and we persuaded him to divert it to quake-hit areas of the AJK,” he told Dawn, while declining to disclose the name of the Arab man.