ISLAMABAD, May 23: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly has decided to get the names of Supreme Court judges who have the membership of Lahore’s controversial Royal Palm Club.

The committee suspects that judges might have withheld a judgment for over a year on a case relating to illegal lease of land and construction of the club because they were given the club membership for a token fee.

“The committee wants to identify the real beneficiaries of a club that has been built by depriving the nation of billions of rupees,” PAC Chairman Nadeem Afzal Gondal said.

Khwaja Asif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N is of the same opinion. “There must be a reason for such generous offers. Otherwise, businessmen don’t make them.”

Khwaja Asif had approached the court for early announcement of the judgment.

The controversy

A federal audit carried out in 2007 found that the government had lost Rs10 billion by leasing out 103 acres of land to the club built in early 2000 on Pakistan Railways’ land in the heart of Lahore.

A special National Assembly committee headed by Mr Gondal was set up in 2008 to investigate the matter. In a report submitted to the house in October 2010, the committee said the government had lost four times the amount earlier estimated — i.e. Rs40 billion.

The committee recommended that the contract be cancelled and disciplinary action taken against then federal minister for railways Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, secretary Lt-Gen (retd) Saeeduz Zafar and general manager Maj-Gen (retd) Hamid Hassan Butt.

The National Assembly unanimously approved the recommendations.

The Supreme Court later took a suo motu notice of the deal and completed its hearing on the case in March last year. But it has yet to issue a judgment.

Yasmin Rehman of the Pakistan People’s Party suggested that the attorney general should convey the committee’s concern to the Supreme Court and facilitate early release of the judgment. “This (club) was one of the former military regime’s major scandals. We need to reach some logical conclusion on the issue,” she said.

NAB gets involved

Pakistan Railways’ officials said the National Accountability Bureau was carrying out its own inquiry into the scam. “According to some reports, the NAB is in final stages of the inquiry. But the bureau has yet to share its findings with us,” the officials said.

The PAC has decided to call for a detailed NAB briefing on all Railways’ deals in a few weeks.

The Chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Pakistan Railways, Ayaz Sadiq of the PML-N, said he had seen documents indicating that NAB had recovered Rs6 billion from the club’s owners.

But Railways’ officials expressed ignorance about the recovery and asked Mr Sadiq to share details with them.