PESHAWAR, Nov 19: The National Accountability Bureau has sought to investigate a multi-billion rupees arms purchase deal in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after an official inquiry discovered “serious irregularities” and a “huge loss to public exchequer”.

Official sources told Dawn that NAB had asked the Police Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to turn over the relevant record pertaining to the purchase of arms, ammunition and protective gears.

According to these officials, the Provincial Inspection Team (PIT) is the competent forum to investigate such matters and that KP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti had already constituted a three-member committee to investigate the matter and fix responsibility.

The inquiry committee, headed by provincial Finance Secretary Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad, was constituted through an official notification on June 16 to investigate whether purchases had been made in conformity with procurement procedures and rules and whether equipment had been procured as per approved standards.

The committee, in its report submitted to the chief minister (a copy of which is available with Dawn), said the Police Department was given an amount of Rs6.923 billion for the procurement of weapons and ammunition during 2008-09 and 2009-10.

Out of this, the committee randomly scrutinised expense vouchers for Rs4.728 billion.

According to the report, the department placed 12 advertisements in newspapers from July 2008 to June this year for purchase of arms worth Rs5.7 billion.

Out of this, the committee found, purchases of Rs4.39 billion were made from a single firm, M/s Majeed & Sons. Out of this, purchases worth Rs1.12 billion were made without placing any advertisement in violation of rules of wide publicity and transparency and provisions of repeat orders as per Public Procurement Rules. “Again the supplier in this case was M/s Majeed & Sons,” the committee noted.

The inquiry committee also reported a departure from Procurement Rules, 2003, in terms of ignoring “on occasions” lowest rates on “flimsy grounds” and quoted several instances to substantiate its case.

Citing a few examples, the report said that deviation and non-compliance of rules alone caused the exchequer a loss of Rs.523.142 million.

It said that certain items, such as magazines of SMGs, were provided as accessories with supplies by the suppliers/manufacturers free of charge. However, the Police Department refused to acknowledge that any item was provided free of charge, though proofs established that these were supplied free of cost but the police claimed to have shown it purchased, the report said.

It also pointed out that the Police Department purchased explosive detectors of a brand which were being internationally criticized for being poor in quality. “Still the same were purchased,” the committee noted.

This poor performance, the committee said, was also highlighted by the office of the Capital City Police, Peshawar, in a subsequent report after putting the equipment to field test. The committee has recommended a third party validation to look into the matter.

FAMILY AFFAIR: Significantly, the committee said that pre-qualification record revealed that most of the competing firms were apparently members of the same family. “Based on this aspect, it has been concluded that sister firms having ownership of the same family have participated. Thus the entire environment of competition seems to have been largely controlled by a singly family/entity”, the committee reported.

A senior official of the Police Department, however, maintained that the violations were merely procedural in nature and speculations about wrongdoings in arms purchases had been blown out of proportions.

The official referred to the second finding of the committee pertaining to ascertaining the quality of weapons and equipment purchased and said that the items were put to test at the Inspectorate of Armament, GHQ, Rawalpindi, and were found to be of good quality.

A cynical police official, however, said that the weapons were not put to rigorous tests and a few random rounds would not have revealed the poor quality of the Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles. “The barrels could not withstand the heat of a staccato of three hundred rounds,” the official said.

The committee recommended the formation of another body to probe the matter further and fix responsibility, approach the Auditor General of Pakistan to constitute an audit team or turn over the case to the National Accountability Bureau.

The chief minister, however, has opted to constitute another committee, knowledgeable sources said.

The committee is headed by Services Secretary Hifzur Rehman. Other members are Sahibzada Fazle Amin, Social Welfare Secretary, and Mohammad Idrees Marwat, Additional Secretary of Finance (Regulation).