KARACHI: Former federal commerce minister Makhdoom Amin Fahim was given a 10-day protective bail by the Sindh High Court in the National Insurance Company (NICL) land scam case on Tuesday.

Chief Justice Mushir Alam granted the Rs500,000 bail to the PPP leader.

An anti-corruption court had issued non-bailable warrants on Monday for his arrest and asked the Federal Investigation Agency to present the accused by April 12.

The applicant’s counsel Advocate Haq Nawaz Talpur said the case pertained to the appointment of former NICL chief Ayaz Khan Niazi and buying of 10 acres in Korangi at exorbitant prices.

He said the rules had been followed by the commerce ministry and two other names had also been recommended for the appointment. The appointment was made by the prime minister after considering the recommendations of the relevant authority.

The lawyer said the petitioner and members of his family had obtained a loan from a private bank and to repay the outstanding amount a mortgaged property in Karachi’s DHA Phase VI had been sold to Zafar Saleem, a co-accused in the scam, for Rs72.5 million.

The counsel said his client had received a partial payment of Rs41m from Mr Saleem but the execution of the property sale could not be fulfilled due to his death in an air crash and the amount was returned to his heirs through cheques. A lawsuit had been disposed of by a court with the parties’ consent.

According to the FIA, Rs900m was transferred to a joint account of Khalid Anwar Khan and Khawaja Akbar Butt, although the amount belonged to Mr Saleem, a former national athlete and director general of the Sindh Workers’ Welfare Board, who was killed in a plane crash on July 28, 2010.The petitioner said his name was not in the interim documents of charges submitted in the case on Dec 6 last year.

The FIA implicated him in the supplementary documents submitted in the trial court on April 1.

The lawyer said the applicant was federal commerce minister at the time of Mr Niazi’s appointment by the then prime minister and his ministry had put up the summary for submission to the premier under the law.

The prime minister is the competent appointing authority for the BPS-21 post.

He said the applicant and his relatives had obtained loan from the Union Bank, which was subsequently merged with the Standard Chartered Bank, and mortgaged their three immovable properties.

Advocate Talpur said that because of financial constraints the applicant and members of his family had been unable to pay the instalments to the bank in accordance with the schedule and they had decided to sell one of the mortgaged properties to settle the account.

The counsel requested the court to grant two-week time to his client so that he could return from London to surrender before the high court and to face trial.