According to reports former passenger sales manager of PIA Islamabad sales office Mr. Fawad Banuri, allegedly misused his authority and continued to give credit to his friend, travel agent by the name of Royal Air Agency, more than the bank guarantee and despite repeated warnings from finance section through official emails dated 6th Feb 2020 that Royal Air (RAT)’s submitted cheques were not cleared. Mr Banuri instead took the responsibility and in an email from PIA official account continued to give credit millions of top up ignoring that as Per PIA letter dated 16th Feb 2021, PIA remained at loss with PKR 22,720,540/= which is almost 22.7 million.
Royal Air Travel’s bank guarantee was 3 million which was filled after 15 February 2020 with validity of 15th Aug 2020. It is revealed that right now almost 11.2 M is still pending. But manager PIA Mr. Fawad Banuri kept on top up and caused loss to National Airline PKR 22,720,540/= 22.7 million.
PIA Sales Agent (PSA) are exclusively PIA Travel agents and don not deal with any other airline, So the agreement between the PSA and PIA is that PIA gives credit through bank guarantee top up to the sales agents. After using this balance, the agent pays the money back through cheque payments, so the cheques that Royal Air (RAT) used to pay back to PIA were bogus and the payments of RAT were not clear. Since, Fawad Banuri was a friend of the sales agent, despite the unclear accounts and bogus cheques, Mr. Banuri kept topping up more amount to his Agent friend from RAT. The previous amount was never clear for RAT and the manager Banuri kept topping up for RAT. After the issue in clearance of paying back the amount to the PIA, PIA tried to block this agent (RAT) and sent an email to Fawad Banuri. However, Fawad Banuri in response to the email said that the top up are being sent to RAT on his own account and responsibility.
“Thanks for the email but since sales and recovery is my prime task so inshAllah will not disappoint Finance unit. Apart from this, I realize my responsibility and will not let the company suffer, but no business is without any risk. However, the responsibility rests on my shoulders and will do it in the best possible manner. As always, recovery will be made as he is already inside B.G and before expiry it will be renewed. Best regards Syed Fawad Banuri Passenger Sales Manager Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). 49,Blue Area Islamabad.”
However, The PIA management has neither issued any letter to the manager nor did they raise any inquiry on this mismanagement while this loss allegedly occurred because of intentional decision of PIA former passenger sales manager Islamabad office. The case was forwarded to many media outlets by PIA staff members as no one took any action on this issues.