KARACHI: An accountability court on Friday imposed a fine of Rs20,000 on the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) due to its lacklustre attitude towards filing a reference regarding investigation into an alleged Rs3.5 billion land allotments scam.

However, in the interest of justice, Accountability Court-I judge Abdul Ghani Soomro granted one more chance to NAB with the direction to pursue the matter with its headquarters and furnish a final report before the court on Sept 10.

The judge was hearing a case against three builders pertaining to allegedly defrauding around 1,100 allottees of a commercial project launched in 1992 and reselling the same in 2013. The land in question is estimated to be valued at Rs3.5bn, it added.

When the matter came up for hearing on Friday, the NAB investigating officer Khalid Khan furnished a report on behalf of the director general, NAB Karachi, seeking more time to file the reference with regard to the alleged scam.

The judge noted that in this matter the reference was awaited since quite some time.

He recalled that it was reported on the last date of hearing that the draft reference had been forwarded to the NAB headquarters, whereupon the IO was directed to pursue it and furnish progress report to the court.

The judge observed that the report of the DG revealed that the filing of the reference was approved by the Regional Board Meeting on June 10 and the same was forwarded to the NAB headquarters on June 21 along with the draft reference, but vide a letter dated July 19, certain documents were sought by the NAB headquarters, which, however, were being provided.

“This reflects lacklustre attitude of the NAB office Karachi which is strongly protested by the allottees/affectees and thus cost of Rs20,000 is imposed on the NAB to be paid through the concerned IO,” the judge ordered.

In the interests of justice, however, the judge granted one more chance to NAB with direction to pursue the matter with its headquarters and furnish a final report before the court on Sept 10.

Earlier, the builders Lal Mohammad and Adam Khan Jokhio appeared before the court on bail.

In December last year, the same court had disposed of an application filed by the builders asking the court to accept their plea bargain settlement with NAB in the present case “for not fulfilling basic requirements’’.

The court had observed that a fresh no-objection certificate from the Sindh Building Control Authority was also yet to be obtained by the builders and the development work too remained to be completed. Besides, there was unwillingness of a majority of the claimants/allottees to accept plot(s) in the Gulshan-i-Elahi project, as offered by the builders, since the said project was already under a separate investigation.

It had further observed that in such circumstances the claimants/allottees, who had been waiting since 1992, could justifiably ask for full compliance with the stipulations of the plea bargain first.

According to the NAB, suspects Lal Mohammad, Adam Khan Jokhio and Haji Adam Khan had allegedly launched the project on 70 acres and collected millions of rupees from hundreds of allottees in 1992. Later, they split the same piece of land on which another builder launched a separate project, it added.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2021