KARACHI, Feb 26: A federal anti-corruption court on Saturday issued non-bailable warrants for the arrest of six absconding suspects in the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) land scam case. NICL chairman Ayaz Khan Niazi, executive director (finance) Mohammad Zahoor, general manager (audit) Ather Naqvi, general manager (real estate) Zahid Hussain and general manager (law) Ijaz Ahmed Sheikh along with their absconding accomplices have been booked for allegedly causing huge financial losses to the exchequer by violating rules in the procurement of a piece of land in Korangi.

On the previous hearing, the court had directed the FIA to submit the final charge-sheet on Feb 26. However, when the case came up for hearing before Judge Shaukat Ali Memon of the Special Federal Anti-Corruption Court-II, Karachi, the FIA failed to submit the final charge-sheet.

The court treated the interim charge-sheet as the final one and issued non-bailable warrants against six absconders — Amin Qasim Dada and Javed Saeed (the directors of the NICL) and Khalid Anwar Khan, Khawaja Akbar Butt, Syed Mohammad Iqbal and Amir Hussian — directing the FIA to arrest and produce them in court till March 12.

The prime suspect, Ayaz Niazi, was not produced in court on Saturday and the judge also issued his production order with a direction to jail authorities to produce him on the next hearing.

The other four suspects are currently confined in Lahore in connection with other cases.

According to the prosecution, the secretary of the federal commerce ministry had sent a written complaint to the FIA on Nov 16, 2010 asking it to carry out a probe of all purchases of land at various places and on different times by the NICL. It also requested the FIA to register a separate case regarding the prima facie embezzlement of the NICL funds in the transaction of 10 acres purchased in August 2009 in the Korangi area against the amount of Rs90 million per acre, which allegedly caused huge losses to the exchequer.

It said that the chairman, the board of directors, the investment committee of the NICL, the sellers, the valuators and others in connivance with each other committed offences of criminal breach of trust, misconduct, forgery and cheating.

A case (FIR 21/10) was registered under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker merchant or agent), 420 (cheating and dishonesty inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequences and where no express provision is made for its punishment) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act-II, 1947 at the FIA Commercial Bank Circle, Karachi.

The FIA placed 24 prosecution witnesses in the charge-sheet.