The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has started a high-level probe into large-scale bungling in the armed forces pensioners' fund being committed by the Peshawar General Post Office (GPO), Business Recorder reliably learnt here on Wednesday.
The NAB has directed Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Navy and Frontier Corps (FC), NWFP and Balochistan to separately investigate fraudulent pension payment to armed forces personnel, sources said.
They said the officials of GPO Peshawar committed a fraud of Rs 10.6831 million in March 2004 and March 2005, while Rs 10.7746 million in April 2004 and April 2005.
The difference of amount shown in the above-mentioned dates to the pensioners include Pakistan Army, Rs 10.17 million and Rs 10.10 million, Pakistan Air Force, Rs 1.192 million, Navy, Rs 270,285 and FC, Rs 363,847, the sources added.
It was also learnt that NAB Frontier Region is investigating into the fraudulent pensions' payments concerning armed forces as well as civil armed forces.
The NAB chairman has also directed the NAB Frontier to submit detailed report/recommendations as soon as possible to the NAB Headquarters, the sources said.
According to official sources, initial study of the case shows that there are four areas, including mismatch of demand and supply of pension amount, record keeping, internal audit and external audit, which required immediate attention to stop recurrence of such incidents.
The NAB has also clarified that embezzlement of millions of rupees in pension payments by the GPO officials surfaced due to criminal negligence of the concerned military accounts offices.
The sources said that the record of last five years regarding payment to military pensioners was missing from the GPO Peshawar, therefore, five different account agencies like director of accounts, Pakistan Post Offices, Lahore, deputy controller of military accounts, Lahore, controller of accounts, Air Force, Peshawar, controller of naval accounts, Karachi, through which pension payments are processed, have also been sought to provide post audit report.
During the course of investigation, it was also revealed that the Military Accounts Department had failed to perform primary task, the sources added.
During the course of inquiry, it was revealed that the alleged post office employees had adopted various corrupt practices for defrauding pension money like tempering or adding digits before or after the official figures, the sources said.
For example, the actual payment of Rs 910 made to a pensioner was shown as Rs 9910 in schedule of payments, by adding the figure of 9 to the left of the actual payment amount and in this way Rs 9,000 were embezzled.
In another case, a pensioner was actually paid Rs 1,356 on his pension book and BPS-7, but on BPS-2, the digit '1' was tampered and shown as Rs 7,356. In this way an amount of Rs 6,000 was embezzled, the official sources said.
The actual pension payment has been paid twice or thrice on different dates in the same month in BPS-2 in July 2003. Payments have been made to deceased pensioners, eg, Tazza Khan of FC, PSB A/C No 1573, who had died in 1986, has been paid Rs 104,587 after his death.
The account numbers of some of the pensioners have been transferred to some other post offices, but the same are continuously showing these pensioners drawing money from the parent GPO, the sources added.
Investigation shows that the payments are being made at two different places to two different individuals with the same Pak number, eg, C/T Pervez Pak/443085 is drawing his pension from GPO Abbottabad vide PSB No 224 F, whereas CWO Aziz Khan with the same Pak number and PSB A/C No is being paid pension at the GPO Peshawar.
It was also learnt that unauthorised payments are being made regularly. For example, children allowance was ceased by the controller of accounts on attaining the age of 21 years on 17.07.2000.
Due to criminal negligence of the officials of the above-mentioned departments the national exchequer is suffering a loss of millions of rupees.
Senior official of the Interior Ministry told Business Recorder that the NAB is currently facing immense hardships in investigating the case as main accused senior postmaster Iftikhar Hussain has been assassinated.
Initially, four employees, including clerk, post master, accountant and senior postmaster, were allegedly involved in the pensions scam, the sources said.