ISLAMABAD, Feb 11: Differences appear to have cropped up among top officials of the Pak-China Sust Dry Port after the National Bank launched an investigation into a Rs50 million loan taken by the company from the bank.

The differences are over “how and who obtained the loan and how it was spent”.The NBP has closed its regional office in Gilgit for sanctioning the loan and reverted its status to a ‘sub-region’ under the bank’s federal capital region.

The Pak-China Sust Dry Port is a joint venture set up in 2002 by Pakistan’s Silk Route Dry Port Trust and China’s Sinotrans Xinjiang Jiuling Transportation & Storage Company Ltd. The Pakistani firm holds 40 per cent share and the Chinese company 60 per cent. The Chinese side invested cash and the Pakistani side provided land.

In a statement sent to Dawn, Yaun Jianmin, the chairman of Pak-China Sust Dry Port Company, alleged that the loan had been obtained by the former vice-chairman of the company, Prince Salim Khan, “through illegal and ugly methods”. He said the Chinese investors were kept “totally in dark” during the entire process.

“We are the victim of this illegal loan,” Mr Yaun said, adding that he had reported the matter to the Pakistani embassy in China and the Chinese embassy in Pakistan as well as the NBP.

Mr Yaun said that no Chinese official of the company was involved in the fraud.

Prince Salim Khan told Dawn on Wednesday that the Chinese investors ran the affairs of the company because they owned 60 per cent shares and controlled its management and all financial matters.

These Chinese, he alleged, were involved in this matter. “If I am found guilty, I am here to compensate for everything,” he said.

He said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company held in China had agreed to obtain the loan from the NBP for expansion work and building a boundary wall around an area of 260 kanals.

Mr Khan said Yaun Jianmin was chairman of the company and Hou Enzon its director and they had jointly signed the loan papers and provided proof of the land to bank officials as collateral.

He said the Chinese management had also denied obtaining two loans totalling Rs8.8 million (Rs5 million and Rs3.8 million) from the NBP after 2006. But later when the bank launched an investigation into the matter, the Chinese had to make payment. It was a similar case again, he added.Mr Khan said he belonged to a political family of the Northern Areas and he was being implicated by some people to malign his family. He alleged that the Chinese management had also put him in trouble by not announcing any dividends from profit for trustees over the past three years.

He said the trustees had demanded dividends, but were told that the Chinese management controlled the company and its financial matters and, therefore, he could not announce dividends.