PESHAWAR, Jan 11: An accountability court here on Saturday froze the properties of an absconding project director of a Swiss-funded project, Small Scale Enterprise Promotion (SSEP), Mr Fasihuzzaman.

The court presided over by Said Maroof Khan, directed that the properties totalling Rs 21.7 million, and including five bungalows in Risalpur (Nowshera district), would remain frozen till the next order.

The project director, accused of embezzling Rs 27.56 of the project funds, has been absconding from the law and on various occasions non-bailable warrants for his arrest have been issued by the accountability court.

Mr Zaman has not been appearing before the court despite repeated notices being sent to him. He went into hiding in 2002 after the financial scandal surfaced in the SSEP and the Swiss government requested the National Accountability Bureau to probe the issue.

The NAB has filed a reference against the accused in which he was charged with embezzling Rs 27.56 million of the project funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Last year the accountability bureau had arrested a coordination manager of the project, Abdul Manan, in the same case. He was however released after his plea-bargain was accepted by the NAB's chairman and he paid Rs 600,000 to the government.

After a preliminary inquiry the NAB found out that the officials were found involved in large scale financial irregularities. The project was initiated within the framework of Agreement on Technical and Scientific Cooperation between the Swiss and Pakistan governments. SSEP was conceived in 1994 as a pilot project for small enterprise development towards incomes and employment generation and entrusted to Swiss Contact, an NGO, for implementation.

The development cooperation programme was formed initially for three years (1995-97), later on extended twice up to the year 2001.