'Action against retired army men not possible': multi-million rupees corruption

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday succumbed to the mighty military's pressure as it withdrew an earlier directive of taking disciplinary action against some top army officials including a brigadier involved in a multi-million rupees corruption case.
At a meeting here, a relevant sub-committee of the PAC, however, did muster some courage for directing the Defence Production Ministry's uniformed officials to recover Rs 12 million their colleagues in Khaki embezzled in a contract awarding deal some 12 years back in 1994.
The change in the directive came after AG military informed the committee that a disciplinary action against retired army men was not possible under the rules.
"Rules do not permit a disciplinary action against retired military officials," was a reply from the AG in response to an earlier PAC directive of penalising corrupt army men.
The AG military, however, told the committee through a letter it had dispatched earlier that the embezzled amount could be recovered from the culprits.
This plea of the AG forced the sub-committee to soften its directive keeping it limited to only recovery of the bribed amount.
Even some vocal members including MNA Qamar-uz-Zaman, who had been giving tough time to top civilian bureaucrats recently, suddenly appeared gentle, nice and soft-spoken when men in Khaki rallied to defend the wrongdoings of their retired colleagues.
At the conclusion of the meeting that lasted for only 25-minute, a sub-committee of the PAC could only issue a mild directive of recovering departmentally the amount a brigadier and some other military men bribed in a contract awarding deal.
The sub-committee ignored the directives of the Ministry of Defence Production and Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) and refused to refer the case of nine corrupt officers including a former brigadier to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
"You yourself should try to recover the bribed amount from the officers and if the arrangement doesn't work, then it can be referred to the NAB," the sub-committee convener Colonel Ghulam Rasool Sahi (retd) directed the officials of the Defence Production Ministry at the end of the meeting.
According to the details of the scam, the DW&CE (Defence Production) signed a deal for establishing a 132 KV grid station in Taxila with AEG Pakistan at a cost of Rs 39 million in March 1994.
Just a touch over a year later, a similar deal for another 132 KV grid station at Kamra was signed but this one at a cost of Rs 64 million.
This 66 percent increase in contract cost raised the suspicions of the Auditor General of Pakistan that officials had pocketed about Rs 12 million at various stages of execution of the contract.
The contract was also allegedly not awarded through open tender in a clear violation of rules governing such contracts.
The issue of fraud was first discussed in the PAC in December 2004, which decided to constitute a sub-committee led by MNA Ghulam Rasool Sahi.
Meanwhile, a military court of inquiry finalised its own recommendations on February 18, 2005 that were presented to the PAC sub-committee in its meetings in June 2005.
In pursuance of PAC directives, cases for disciplinary action against the civilian accused were forwarded to the E-In-C Branch and for military officers to the AG Branch of GHQ.
However, the E-in-C Branch returned the case on the plea that under rule 54-A disciplinary proceedings against retired personnel couldn't be initiated.
The AG branch referred the case to GHQ's JAG branch that stated that disciplinary action against retired army personnel couldn't be initiated but money can be recovered from their pensions.