ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday filed an application in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) seeking to file a corruption reference against Prime Minister Imran Khan for withholding funds of Rs400 million allocated for the Narowal Sports City Complex Project (NSCCP).

The application filed by Iqbal says that Prime Minister Imran Khan and his accomplices are guilty of misuse of authority to sabotage a vitally important national project through willful default and criminal breach of trust on political grounds, thereby causing millions of rupees loss to the national exchequer.

"The real crime is to sabotage this important project for sports development in the country by stopping release of [the] remaining funds and work at the behest of the prime minister," he added.

For the last two years, he said, the project had been abandoned with major damages to the facilities already constructed. "Astroturf and athletic field track imported worth millions of rupees were not installed in time and have been wasted lying in crates as warranty by [the] supplier was allowed to expire."

He says in his application that the release of remaining Rs400 million to complete the project from total approved cost of Rs2.9 billion of which 86 percent fund have been spent, was withheld causing work to stop and contractors to demobilise.

"Now, [an] additional billions of rupees will have to be spent in re-mobilisation claims and cost escalation heads in order to complete this project," Iqbal maintained.

While talking to the media outside the NAB headquarters in Islamabad, he said he hoped that the NAB chairman would see the case and not the face.

Iqbal said he had submitted the application and asked the NAB chairman to make a case on how various projects had been ruined under Prime Minister Imran Khan. He alleged that history's biggest corruption was committed in the BRT Peshawar project.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020