LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is likely to approve a plea bargain request of the Eden Housing amounting to Rs15 billion.
If approved, it will be the biggest bargain in the housing sector in the country in which more than 12,000 people are affected.
“Anjum Amjad, the widow of Eden Housing owner Dr Amjad, has requested the NAB to accept a plea bargain amounting to Rs15bn and give her two years for the payment. But the bureau asked her to make the plea bargain amount (Rs15bn) within a year,” a source told Dawn on Tuesday.
Earlier, an accountability court had extended the interim pre-arrest bail of Anjum Amjad with a direction to finalise her plea bargain with the NAB in a Rs25bn scam by April 11.
Hundreds of affectees of the housing scam gathered outside the accountability court as Ms Amjad arrived with her counsel on expiry of her pre-arrest bail and protested against her and the bureau.
The counsel for Ms Amjad told the court that a meeting of his client with the chairman of the NAB had been delayed due to the law and order situation in Islamabad.
The court directed the counsel to finalise the plea bargain with the NAB.
According to the NAB, there are over 12,000 affectees of the housing scam unearthed in 2013. The suspects had collected over Rs25bn from the public through fraud and fled the country. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government had given hope to the affected people of retrieving their hard-earned money when the Federal Investigation Agency arrested Dr Murtaza Amjad, the son-in-law of former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, in Dubai with the help of Interpol in 2019. Later, Dr Murtaza was released in Dubai as the PTI government failed to provide any evidence required for bringing him back to Pakistan to put him on trial.
The properties owned by Eden were worth Rs25bn.
Meanwhile, the president of the association of affectees, Umer Farooq, has rejected the move, saying the paltry amount can’t compensate their loss.
He says the 12,000 affectees had deposited their hard-earned money with the Eden management for getting plots. He says the cost of land has increased manifold and the depositors can’t get a plot with this meagre sum.
He says the project had been launched in 2009 and the Eden management had promised to hand over plots in three and a half years. He claims the NAB’s assessment of Eden’s assets is on the lower side (Rs25bn) which should have been Rs40bn.
Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2022