KARACHI, Sept 9: The National Accountability Bureau (Nab) has launched investigation into the alleged corruption in the award of Karachi Master Plan-2020 Project to a firm, M/s Engineering Consultants International (ECIL), a Nab statement issued here on Sunday said.

In response to the Expression of Interest (EoI) invited by the city government for the project in November 2004, as many as 13 firms and consortia had submitted their offers. These were subsequently evaluated for pre-qualification by the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC), constituted by the city government.

Four of the 13 consortia were pre-qualified by the TEC, of which three consortia of consultants had submitted their technical and financial proposals.

“While examining the documents submitted by M/s ECIL, it has come to the light that the firm had falsely represented itself as partner of the Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi,” the Nab statement said.

“The former nazim, Naimatullah Khan, and the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) over-ruled advice of the EDO Law in this regard and the Master Plan-2020 contract was awarded to the same firm in spite of major irregularities committed by this firm,” the statement claimed.—APP