The Supreme Court on Monday would resume hearing of details of loans amounting to Rs 256.665 billion which had been written off since 1971. A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday would take up the suo motu case.
On last hearing, the bench had directed the State Bank of Pakistan to furnish province-wise details of the loans written off since 1971. The SBP has been asked to contact other banks to ascertain details of the cases pending with banking courts for recovery of loans as well as criminal cases under offences of the Special Courts Ordinance, 1984.
The bench ordered that details of mortgaged properties in lieu of loans should also be submitted because it wanted to know what had happened to them and how these were disposed of.
The bench also asked what action had been taken against defaulters under the Companies Ordinance and how many cases were still pending before banking courts for loan recovery as well as the number of criminal cases filed in bad debts. On February 2, SBP in its report submitted to the apex court had stated that an amount of Rs 256.665 billion had been written off between 1971 and 2009, benefiting as many as 669,819 borrowers.
The apex court had taken a suo motu notice in 2007 on a news report that then Musharraf government had waived off Rs 53.499 billion bank loans between 2002 and 2007. The loans were given to influential people on the basis of a decision taken by his financial team in December 2002.
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