KARACHI: An accountability court on Tuesday approved the plea bargain reached by five convicts with the National Accountability Bureau in a case pertaining to corruption of Rs175 million in the Sindh tourism development department.

The convicts — Fahad Ali, Asif Ali, Liaquat Ali, Mashooque Ali and Shahid Hussain Abro — were found guilty of committing corruption by obtaining government contracts for their fake companies in 2017.

On Tuesday, the convicts filed applications through their defence counsel under Section 25(b) of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 pleading to accept their plea bargain with the NAB authorities in the matter.

The counsel submitted that the applicants had struck a plea bargain with NAB to voluntarily return money in terms of Section 25(b) of the NAO 1999.

The bureau had determined the liability of Rs103,000 against Fahad Ali, Rs1,513,363 against Asif Ali, Rs4,805,825 against Mashooque Ali and Rs2,509,650 against Shahid Hussain.

The counsel further mentioned that the convicts were ready to voluntarily return such amount of the liability and pleaded to the court to approve their plea bargain with the bureau in the terms agreed between the parties.

Special public prosecutor Shahbaz Sahotra also gave his consent to such an arrangement between the parties stating that the prosecution had no objection if the applications for the plea bargain were allowed by the court.

After hearing arguments from the parties, AC-IV judge Farid Anwar Qazi approved the applications.

The judge also convicted them for committing the offence as alleged by the prosecution.

According to the prosecution, an inquiry was carried out into the alleged corruption and corrupt practices of Roshan Ali Kanasro, the managing director of the Sindh Tourism Development Corporation (STDC), and other officials on April 3.

During the course of investigation, it transpired that the STDC had invited tenders for award of contracts worth Rs175m to private contractors for purchase of furniture, repair of vehicles, event management and printing/publication, etc, it said.

The tenders were published in dummy newspapers on July 31, 2017 and most of the participating companies were fake and had been formed only to get these tenders, the prosecution added.

The prosecution said that the record showed that an advertisement appeared on Aug 31, 2017 in less-known daily newspapers regarding award of contracts/tenders to five firms — M/s Sameer Enterprises, M/s Fahad Enterprises, M/s RMA Sahita Brothers, M/s Burraq Business and M/s Total Computing Technology.

However, NAB claimed that the amount awarded for tenders was largely embezzled, adding that apparently the jobs/work had been distributed among the bidding companies through a ring by the chairman of the tender committee.

It added that the rates quoted by firms concerned also appeared to be exorbitant while most of the work had only been done on paper and no inventory details had been prepared by responsible officials.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2019