ISLAMABAD: The Nati­onal Accountability Bureau (NAB) decided on Tuesday to hold inquiry against three former chairmen of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for their alleged involvement in corruption and misuse of authority.

The former FBR chairmen in question are Salman Saddique, Abdullah Yousuf and Ali Arshad Hakeem. The decision was taken at a meeting of the NAB’s executive board.

The board also authorised an inquiry against former collector of Customs Mian Azhar Majeed, Member of the PACCs Team Iqbal Muneeb and additional collector of Customs Ashir Azeem Gill for being allegedly involved in corrupt practices and misuse of authority in awarding a contract for computerisation of the FBR department to a foreign company, M/s Agility.

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Their decision allegedly caused a loss of $11 million to the national exchequer. A claim of $650m was also filed by M/s Agility.

The award of the contract and the subsequent mismanagement on part of M/s Agility led to huge losses in clearance of custom goods at the Karachi port.

The board authorised an inquiry against M/s Tandlianwala Sugar Mills (Pvt) Limited and others. In this case, the management of the mills was accused of a suspicious transaction of $6.9m.

An inquiry was authorised against M/s Al-Abid Silk Mills Limited, referred to NAB by the State Bank of Pakistan in pursuance of section 31-D of the NAO, 1999, regarding wilful default of a Rs479.8m loan.

According to NAB, an inquiry was authorised against M/s ACE Securities (Pvt) Limited, a brokerage house, on charges of fraud, embezzlement, corrupt practices and cheating public at large.

In this case, Chief Executive Officer Haroon Iqbal and Director Iqbal Ismail were accused of fraud, embezzlement, corrupt practices and cheating the public, thus causing a loss of Rs236m.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2015

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