Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. — Photo by AFP

ISLAMABAD: Right from the time of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz, FIA's Additional Director General Zafar Qureshi had been on the side of the powerful, until his appointment as investigation officer of the politically explosive National Insurance Company (NICL) scam.

Mr Qureshi, whose one brother worked as establishment secretary with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and another got support from the PPP in his unsuccessful bid to win by-election for a National Assembly seat, appears now to have turned his guns on the government.

According to PML-Q leaders, Mr Qureshi has been acting to appease the PML-N and eyeing a political career with the party.

Sources in the power corridors told this reporter that the prime minister was feeling betrayed by Mr Qureshi whose family he had been facilitating in the best possible way. He had never imagined that any of the brothers would create such a serious problem for his government, they said.

The NICL scandal is turning out to be a nightmare for the PPP-led government as the judiciary has taken the executive head on over the issue.

Zafar Qureshi's brother Ismail Qureshi served as establishment secretary, one of the key positions in the federal bureaucracy, with Prime Minister Gilani. When he retired in December last year, the prime minister, instead of sending him home, appointed him as rector of the National School of Public Policy (NSPP) for three years.

The prime minister took this decision at a time when he had publicly spoken against awarding extensions to retiring bureaucrats.

Earlier, Prime Minister Gilani had gone all the way to Sargodha where Mazhar Qureshi, another brother of Zafar Qureshi, was contesting by-election for National Assembly seat NA-68 as an independent candidate against the PML-N in August last year. The local PPP chapter also supported Mazhar but he narrowly lost to Shafqat Baloch of the PML-N.

However, Zafar Qureshi is not new to controversy. During the Shaukat Aziz government, when the central selection board didn't recommend his name for promotion from BS-19 to BS-20, the then prime minister went out of the way to include his name in the list of promoted officers.

Lt-Gen (retd) Jamshed Gulzar Kiani, the-then chairman of the Federal Public Services Commission (FPSC) protested to Mr Aziz on receiving the changed list of promoted officers in the police service. When the former prime minister refused to listen to Gen Kiani, he wrote to then president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf about the tampered list.

In routine, prime ministers endorse the recommendations of the selection board. The controversy didn't stop there. Gen Musharraf got annoyed with Gen Kiani for protesting against his hand-picked prime minister and sent him home by cutting short his five-year tenure.

The sources said that when he was promoted to BS-21, Zafar Qureshi had specifically requested for posting as managing director of National Police Foundation (NPF), a post previously held by a former inspector general.

He was allowed to complete and submit report on the NICL scam and subsequently given his new assignment.

The source said that he later on tried to manoeuvre his way into heading the Federal Investigation Agency as director general through his brother who was the establishment secretary at the time.

However, by that time Ismail Qureshi was himself looking for extension after retirement and could not pursue his case.

However, a federal secretary said that, for right or wrong reasons, it was the executive's authority to run the government. He said the best option for Zafar Qureshi in the given circumstances was to relieve him from the case which had obvious political streaks because a bureaucrat had to follow certain rules and he couldn't go against a sitting government.