PESHAWAR, Dec 8: An accountability court here has issued arrest warrants of the project director of a Swiss-funded project, Fasihuz Zaman, as he has been evading arrest.

It is learnt that an official of the National Accountability Bureau, NWFP, who has been investigating a case of embezzlement in the Small Scale Enterprise Promotion (SSEP) Project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) had informed the court presided over by Said Maroof Khan on Wednesday last that the prime accused, Mr Zaman, has been evading arrest.

The official requested the court to issue his arrest warrants as without repeated summons he had not been appearing before the court. The NAB has already arrested a project coordinator, Abdul Manan, after conducting preliminary inquiry on the request of the Swiss government.

During initial investigation the NAB has detected misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs300 million. An official of the NAB claimed that in case the accused could not be arrested the court would start proceedings against him under section 87 and 88 of the Criminal Procedure Code for declaring him a proclaimed offender and for attaching his properties.

Moreover, he added that the NAB would also file a reference against him under section 31-A of the NAB Ordinance for convicting him in absentia. Under the said section an accused could be sentenced to three years imprisonment for evading his arrest.

Meanwhile, the accused Abdul Manan has given an application to the NAB officials for a plea-bargain. He has been in the custody of NAB for the last 16 days. Initially, he was remanded in the NAB’s custody for 12 days. Later on, the NAB was allowed his custody for further 8 days.

Abdul Manan was allegedly responsible for controlling the accounts of regional offices at Peshawar, Mingora and Rawalpindi. Advances were made on monthly basis by the programme office Peshawar more than the amounts actually received by the regional offices. Fake expenses summary sheets were fabricated and in order to support these additional expenses claims, various bills were amended or additional fake bills concocted. This mechanism, the NAB claimed, enabled him to misappropriate an amount of over Rs8 million.

The NAB has claimed that the programme was initiated within the framework of Agreement on Technical and Scientific Cooperation between the Swiss Government and Government of Pakistan. It claimed that the project director, in connivance with Abdul Manan, and other staff, took illegal advantage of weak accounting system of SSEP and administrative authority.

The development cooperation programme was formed initially for three years (1995-97), later on extended twice up to year 2000. This was aimed at improving technical skills of construction-related small-scale industries, silk weaving industry, cottage textile industry, etc. This was done through imparting training to technical persons through SSEP, registered in Pakistan.