ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) claimed to have recovered Rs23 billion in multi-billion fake banks account cases involving former president Asif Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur, two former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, and others.
An official told that out of the total 43 fake account cases, 12 were at the investigation stage, while 21 were at inquiry stage.
The anti-graft body had nominated Zardari in four cases, Sharif and Gilani in one each, and Khawaja Anwar Majeed in nine cases, he said.
An official said DG NAB Rawalpindi Irfan Naeem Mangi informed a meeting on Monday presided over by the NAB chairman former Justice Javed Iqbal that the anti-graft body has recovered Rs23 billion so for in fake bank accounts cases, and deposited in the national exchequer.
The NAB has also returned millions of rupees to the Sindh government in Roshan Sindh Programme scam, a case pertaining to fake account cases, he said.
He said the meeting was also informed that the bureau had recovered Rs10 billion in sugar scam in Sindh and deposited in the national exchequer, which was subsequently returned to the Sindh government.
He said a total of 1,230 corruption references were currently before different accountability courts and their worth is approximately Rs743 billion.
According to an official statement of the bureau, Mangi told the meeting that the NAB Rawalpindi initiated probe in illegal award of contracts for installation of solar street lights in municipal and town committees of Sindh under Roshan Sindh programme.
As per findings of the joint investigation team (JIT) formed to investigate fake accounts a total of 19 contractors have deposited kickbacks in different fake bank accounts, it says.
The investigation revealed that three contractors namely, Wadood Engineering Services (Pvt) Limited along with MJAB Construction Company and Zafar Enterprises JV, were illegally awarded six contracts pertaining to a project namely Installation of Solar Street Lights in Municipal and Town Committees of Sindh (Roshan Sindh Program) by officials of rural development, Sindh, it says.
The meeting was informed that an expert from the Pakistan Council of Renewable Energy Technologies (PCRET), with the NAB team collected solar lights form Hyderabad, Sukkur and Larkana, and tested in the LAB of PCRET, Islamabad.
A report regarding technical specification of the solar lights revealed that the lights are all-in-on solar lights, wherein the parts such as solar panel, battery charge controller, and LED are present and manufactured in integrated from contrary to PC-1, wherein, these were mentioned as disintegrated items wherein, cost estimation of each items is done separately, it said.
He said the expert provided per unit cost of solar light based on the market survey, on the basis of which exorbitant profit charged by the contractors but product were totally different from the PC-1.
An item which was costing only Rs600 to Rs 2,000 but was shown in documents to be purchase for Rs 60,000, he said.
However, charge controller items were never purchased in actual.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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