Daily Times

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday arrested senior bureaucrat and a close aide of Sharif family Fawad Hassan Fawad in various corruption cases, including the Rs 14 billion Ashiana Iqbal Housing Scheme scandal.

NAB officials, after initially denying his arrest, said that the top civil servant was called to the bureau for questioning and later arrested for causing a loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer in various scams.

Listing the corruption charges, NAB officials said Fawad wrongfully awarded the Ashiana contract to ‘favourites’ and illegally awarded contracts for nine CNG stations. Moreover, while being the provincial health secretary, Fawad acquired six mobile health units which were purchased at a higher-than-market rate, according to the NAB.

The former aide to the Sharif brothers was also allegedly employed by Bank Alfalah although his request had been declined by the secretary establishment, and Sprint Energy (a JS Group subsidiary), where he allegedly prepared fake no-objection certificates for transfer of the site of a CNG pump from one district to another.

NAB Lahore director general said that Fawad will be presented in an accountability court on Friday to obtain his physical remand for further investigation.

A NAB source said Fawad had been summoned six times but joined the investigation only twice. NAB officials reportedly received approval from higher-ups to arrest Fawad, and subsequently took him into custody within the bureau’s premises when he failed to satisfy officials probing his alleged involvement in the Ashiana case.

According to a NAB official, the anti-corruption watchdog’s Rawalpindi office has opened a second case against Fawad in which he is accused of constructing a mega mall in the heart of Rawalpindi. The value of the property is said to be over Rs 12 billion. The construction of the multi-storey plaza is almost complete.

The complainant in this case has asked that how a grade-21 officer (Fawad) managed to construct and own such an expensive property. It has been claimed in the complaint that nine of the 10 floors of the building are owned by Fawad and his brother, who allegedly used their influence to secure financing from JS Bank for the building’s construction.

The complainant claimed that Fawad and his brother got the commercial plot – located opposite to the GPO in Sadar – in exchange for a residential plot on Rawalpindi’s Haider Road.

Published in Daily Times, July 6^th 2018.