LAHORE: The board of the directors (BoD) of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) on Saturday dismissed its managing director Ali J. Hamdani from service on charges of corruption and irregularities.

The decision to remove Mr Hamdani, who was placed under suspension with the direction to avoid exercising his authority on Feb 18, was made in a meeting held in Islamabad.

“During the meeting, the case of the suspended MD Mr Hamdani was placed before the board for discussion and final decision. Eight of 11 members of the board were of the view that he (Mr Hamdani) must be shown the door for being involved in malpractices,” an official in the petroleum division privy to the development told Dawn.

“On the opinion from the majority of members, the board decided to remove him from service. A notification/termination letter has been issued. But it will be made public after submission to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE), mandatory under the law, as the company is listed as a public limited firm,” the official, requesting anonymity, said.

To a question, he replied that the service of Mr Hamdani had been terminated with immediate effect. However, the decision to give him service benefits as prescribed in his appointment letter or mentioned in the service manual would be decided by the board at a later stage.

Top official was already under suspension since February

It may be mentioned that after placing Mr Hamdani under suspension in February, Mr Amir Tufail, the deputy managing director, was entrusted with the charge of the MD of the SNGPL on an officiating basis.

Later, a probe was launched into the charges against Mr Hamdani, including those of irregularities and corruption. The allegations against him also included adoption of a 270km route for Bannu West and Walid 1 gas pipeline project instead of 55km despite being repeatedly agitated by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) at a projected cost of Rs22bn.

During his tenure of two years, according to the list of allegations, Mr Hamdani (being a resident of Karachi) was reported to have travelled to Karachi from Lahore 75 times for personal reasons by making them as official trips and arranging meetings in Karachi instead of Lahore. In a bid to justify his trips, he used to take various officers to Karachi along with him that resulted in loss of millions of rupees to the public money. Moreover, the MD had the right to keep two vehicles at his disposal but Mr Hamdani used to keep seven vehicles. Besides, he wanted the company to buy more luxury vehicles in violation of the austerity policy. Internal audit reports also raised observations to misuse of power by him. Moreover, he was reported to be ‘unlawfully’ absent from his official duties for the last 3/4 months after the SNGPL BoD barred him from exercising his powers as the MD in February this year while assigning the charge of acting MD to Amer Tufail.

In April, the scope of the probe into the alleged corruption by the former MD had been widened after Rs135m security bid issued to a lead partner of a joint venture to get contract of a USD39m gas compression project was encashed by the Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) due to irregularities, mismanagement and misuse of power allegedly on the part of Mr Hamdani. This also forced the authorities to broaden the scope of the ongoing inquiries separately by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the board of directors (BoD) of the company.

Mr Hamdani termed the decision of the BoD contempt of court.

“This is contempt of court and the matter is sub judice and verdict on on my illegal removal will be announced on Monday (June 26),” he said. “This is totally malafide and contempt of court,” he told Dawn.

Mr Hamdani had moved the high court against the company’s act of suspending him from service.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2023