LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday arrested senior bureaucrat Fawad Hassan Fawad in some corruption cases, including the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme scam.

The Lahore NAB had summoned Mr Fawad at least 11 times, but he ignored most of the summons and only thrice appeared before a bureau team.

On Thursday he was called to NAB offices in Thokar Niaz Beg for questioning in the housing scheme scam and arrested for “not giving satisfactory answers” to the investigators.

Recently posted as director general of the Civil Services Academy, Mr Fawad had earlier worked as a principal secretary to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who condemned his arrest while talking to the media in London.

NAB officials will present Mr Fawad before an accountability court on Friday (today) to obtain his physical remand.

NAB officials said Mr Fawad, while serving as implementation secretary to the Punjab chief minister in the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Project, had misused his authority.

A NAB investigator told Dawn that Mr Fawad had issued illegal orders to Chief Executive of the Punjab Land Development Company Tahir Khursheed to suspend the award of the contract to execute the housing project to the Chaudhry Latif and Sons. The contract was legally awarded to the company but it was illegally suspended after eight months, he added.

An inquiry under the supervision of Finance Secretary Tariq Bajwa was conducted to investigate the nature of the award of the contract, the investigator said. The inquiry report declared the process legal and in the spirit of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules.

The investigator alleged that Mr Fawad had shelved the inquiry report and had not informed the authorities concerned about it.

He said the Chaudhry Latif and Sons had paid Rs70 million as mobilisation advance and begun work on the project. The government had to pay Rs5.9m to the company due to the illegal suspension of the contract, he added.

The NAB investigator said that the illegal steps taken by Mr Fawad had not only caused an inordinate delay in the execution of the project but also resulted in a project cost hike in billions.

He said that NAB had repeatedly summoned the accused but he had turned up only thrice.

The Punjab government had launched the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Project under public-private partnership to provide houses to people at subsidised rates. NAB has already arrested Ahad Khan Cheema, former director general of the Lahore Development Authority,and four others on the charge of committing corruption in the scam.

According to the investigator, the bureau found during the investigation that Mr Cheema had played a role in illegally awarding the contract to the Casa Developers, the company that was not eligible for it according to the Public Private Partnership Act, in return of 30 kanals of land.

The payment for purchase of the land was made from the bank account of the Paragon Housing Society. In another case, NAB had found that a murky deal was made between the Paragon Housing Society and the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme for exchange of 40 kanals of land.

NAB has filed a reference against Mr Cheema who is currently in jail.

The investigator alleged that Mr Fawad while serving as Punjab health secretary had bought six mobile healthcare units at the inflated rate of Rs55 million per unit.

He said Mr Fawad had illegally served in Bank Alfalah from Sept 2005 to July 2006 though the establishment secretary had rejected his request for taking up a job at the bank.

While working for the Sprint Energy, a sister organisation of the JS Group, Mr Fawad had prepared counterfeit no objection certificates for shifting of nine CNG pumps from one district to other, the NAB investigator alleged.

The irregularities committed by the accused had caused a loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer, he added.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2018