KARACHI: An accountability court accepted on Wednesday plea bargain of two builders in a case pertaining to cheating public at large some 20 years ago.
Mian Abdul Jabbar along with three others was charged with cheating the public of Rs84,661,271 through bogus allotments of residential apartments and shops in Karachi.
On Tuesday, Accountability Court-IV judge Suresh Kumar accepted the plea bargain reached by accused Mian Abdul Jabbar with the National Accountability Bureau authorities under Section 25(b) of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999.
According to the prosecution, the anti-graft watchdog initiated investigation in April 2004 into fake booking of shops and apartments in a multistorey project Jason Beach View on the false promise of constructing ground plus 14-storey commercial-cum-residential plaza. It further mentioned that accused Mian Abdul Jabbar and his brother Abdul Samad Siddiqui along with their business partners Sultan Ahmed Sani and Latif Tambra (both have died) had booked 148 shops on the ground floor instead of permitted 18 shops and 753 flats against the permitted 131 flats in the project.
The accused told the purchasers that they were constructing a 14-storey building instead of ground plus-four-storey building. They had collected a sum of Rs108,111,413 against these bookings till March 22, 2000.
The watchdog said the accused later returned Rs1,88,28,842 to some allottees or adjusted them by handing over flats and shops in other projects. The project in question was never completed. Both the builders moved an application, submitting that the DG NAB had accepted their plea bargain, as they were ready to pay the amount of liability determined on their part. The watchdog determined the amount of liability at Rs84,661,271 against both the accused, out of which they had already paid Rs54,346,432, whereas the remaining amount of Rs30,314,839 was to be paid in form of pay orders in favour of the chairman of NAB.
The builders cheated the public by allotting bogus flats and shops 20 years ago
However, the accused presented a cheque of Rs30m.
They also assigned a leased property as surety in Block 6 of the PECHS in case any further claim arises.
Special public prosecutor Dr Raja Muhammad Ali informed that final assessment had been worked out against the applicants on the condition that the allottees will be paid four times the amount of their claims and the leased property assigned to NAB will be used to settle any further claims. The prosecutor and the applicants’ counsel Mohammad Rehan Ghous asked the judge to accept the application for plea bargain. The judge accepted the deal and convicted them under NAO.
Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2020
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.