Taking serious notice of handing over of land leased for construction of Lawyers Complex in Islamabad to Hotel Ambassador by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) in 2011, which caused Rs 1.67 billion loss to national kitty, a parliamentary panel has asked all the people involved to explain the lease violation.
A subcommittee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which met with MNA Noor Alam Khan in the chair, asked former President SCBA Ali Zafar, owner of Hotel Ambassador Zafarullah Marwat, chief commissioner Islamabad and chairman Capital Development Authority (CDA) to explain the entire saga.
The officials of Auditor General of Pakistan informed the panel that land was acquired by the CDA to build Lawyers Complex for the lawyers of the Supreme Court. It was an attempt to facilitate the members of legal community coming across Pakistan at a feasible location but the CDA and other authorities handed over land to Marwat.
The officials said that as a result of this transfer of land, national kitty suffered a loss of Rs 1.67 billion as the SCBA allegedly violated an agreement on utilization of a plot which it had signed with the city managers. The auditors pointed out that in 2011, the SCBA had been allotted a 4,000 squares yard plot in Sector G-5 at a subsidized rate for construction of a bar building and a hostel.
The CDA allotted the land to the SCBA against the nominal rate of Rs 4,500 per square yard. However, the auditors said the SCBA did not utilize the land for the purpose it had been allotted. At present, Grand Ambassador Hotel is being operated on the land. "The plot was leased out at a subsidized rate for a specific purpose but now the lessee has changed its use. So either the lessee should be asked to stop the activity or the lease amount be recovered at the actual market price," the auditors said.
The officials said that in violation of the terms and conditions of the lease, the SCBA set up a commercial hotel on the plot. They said that the civic agency had issued a notice to the SCBA for breaching the conditions of the allotment agreement. The AGP officials said, "During the scrutiny of the building plan file of the plot leased to the SCBA, it has been observed that the land was allotted to the SCBA in 2011 at subsidized rate of Rs 4,500 per square yard amounting to Rs 18,000,000."
The AGP officials said that the lessee utilized the plot for a purpose other than the one mentioned in the allotment agreement. It established Grand Ambassador Hotel in the building and signed a 10-year agreement with Zafarullah Khan Marwat for Rs 2.7 million per month rent of the building.
The panel while discussing the audit report 2017-18 settled the paras of Senate Secretariat regarding 6 unauthorized usages of vehicles by chairman Senate and unauthorized use of vehicles by deputy chairman senate.
The expenditures incurred on use of excess vehicles by the chairman and deputy chairman were Rs 28.086 million and Rs 9.958 million respectively. The grant of additional vehicle was in violation of the Chairman and Speaker (Salaries, Allowances and Privileges) Act, 1975.
The departmental accounts committee (DAC) in its meeting held on 01.03.2018 recommended to submit the case to the federal government for ex-post facto approval regarding use of four general and two escort vehicles, in addition to the vehicles entitled under the Act, by the chairman and deputy chairman Senate and pended till ex-post facto approval of the additional vehicles by the federal government.
The officials informed the panel that chairman and deputy chairman Senate from 2011 to 2017 used these vehicles owing to security threats but all the vehicles were of old models. They said that in practice speaker National Assembly (NA), deputy speaker NA, chairman Senate and deputy chairman Senate use vehicles not more than five years old but the vehicles pointed out by AGP used by former senate chairman and deputy chairman were over five years old.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019