ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: An accountability court on Monday extended for another ten days the judicial remand of three accused involved in a massive corruption through local purchases involving Rs158 million in a project of Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) initiated with the Chinese assistance.
The accountability court No III adjourned the proceedings asking the authorities to produce Raja Arshad, the divisional engineer built and operate (BT) project Islamabad, Syed Akbar Hassan Jaffery, the director BT project Gujranwala and Gohar Aman, the divisional engineer BT project Peshawar again on December 5.
The contract was signed between China Wanbao/ZTE and the PTCL on October 17, 1998 for the installation of 305,000 digital telephone lines in the country.
The accused were involved in the misappropriation of funds through purchases which were never required and exceeded too far from the requirement.
According to the reference, the prices sanctioned for the purchase of these items were also several times higher than the market value and made on some bogus or highly-inflated rates with an intention to simply defraud the PTCL.
Meanwhile, the accountability court No I deferred the hearing of a corruption case against ex-naval chief admiral (retd) Mansurul Haq for December 8 since his counsel was not available on Monday.
The court was scheduled to hear and decide about the plea- bargain application of Mansurul Haq. The prosecution being represented by deputy prosecutor general Abdul Baseer Qureshi had to inform about NAB’s point of view on the application of the retired admiral Mansurul Haq.
In his application, Admiral Mansurul Haq had asked the court to stay the proceedings in the corruption reference against him and direct the NAB authorities to release him and make arrangements for receiving full amount of the alleged corruption money.
According to the court’s indictment the admiral was accused of receiving kickbacks, commissions and bribe to the tune of $3.369 million from the foreign suppliers in defence deals. The charges were framed after his similar plea-bargain application was rejected by the former chairman of NAB.