Commerce Ministry is said to have constituted a three-member committee, under the chairmanship of a Joint Secretary, to probe the of millions of rupees embezzlement by a group of employees in National Tariff Commission (NTC), official sources exclusively told Business Recorder. Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has already taken three employees of NTC into custody in this connection.
With the initiation of this inquiry by FIA there are four inquiries in progress on the same issue. "FIA, Controller, General Accounts and NTC are all separately investigating the embezzlement in accordance with their jurisdictions," sources added. So far, an accountant, one clerk, and one peon have been taken into custody by FIA, but there are allegations that some senior officers, who were involved in the forgery, are being protected. Fingers have also been raised at the Director Administration of NTC, who clears the cheques, but he has not been touched so far.
An insider told this scribe that some officials of FTO, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) may also be part of this fraud as there are variations in the entries of NTC, FTO and banks. According to him, FIA is investigating the criminal side of the scam, which includes forgery. At least two cash books are missing from the record of the NTC.
One of the employees in FIA custody has confessed that he was involved in the forgery of checques. An interesting aspect of this financial fraud is that the embezzlement started some ten years ago, of which 8 years were given a clean chit by the audit teams of the Commerce Ministry and Auditor General of Pakistan.
"If these audit teams had caught the fraud, prompt action would have been taken against the culprits," an insider said. Another official, who is familiar with the state of affairs, told this newspaper that the Ministry did not conduct audit for the last two or three years, which amounts to criminal negligence. The Commerce Ministry's committee will investigate if any official of the Commerce Ministry was involved in this forgery.
In an interview with Business Recorder, Secretary Commerce, Suleman Ghani, admitted that employees were involved in withdrawal of money through fake bills. When asked, how many employees of the NTC were involved in the embezzlement, he replied "I don't know". According to him, an inquiry is in progress and whosoever is involved in this fraud will be taken to task. "There is strong evidence that embezzlement has taken place," he added.