Daily Times

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairperson Imran Khan was on Tuesday given 15 days to respond to a questionnaire regarding his use of helicopters owned by the Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa government.

Khan, whose party is in talks with other political outfits to form the government in the Centre, faces a probe by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for using a government-owned Mi-17 and Ecureuil helicopters for 74 hours, causing a loss of Rs2.1 million to the national exchequer.

Former KP chief minister Pervez Khattak and former speaker of the provincial assembly, Asad Qaiser, accompanied Imran to the NAB Peshawar office, where he stayed for an hour. Strict security measures were put in place around NAB’s Peshawar office. Security was also tightened in Hayatabad and surrounding areas.

Earlier, the PTI chief had been summoned on July 18, but he sought more time to appear due to electioneering activities.

The matter of the helicopter use had come to the limelight on January 29 when a private TV channel reported that the former KP government spent millions of rupees on Khan’s use of the provincial government’s helicopters. NAB chairman Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal in February directed the bureau to launch a probe on the matter.

In its response on the matter, the then PTI-led KP government had denied that Khan was given any helicopter for his private and personal use. A spokesperson said that since 2013, the government had not used helicopters for any purpose other than official business.

Published in Daily Times, August 8^th 2018.