Daily Times

An accountability court in Lahore on Thursday indicted former director general of the Lahore Development Authority Ahad Khan Cheema in a reference filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income.

Accountability court judge Syed Najamul Hassan extended Cheema’s judicial remand for 14 days.

The bureau’s lawyer said Cheema had billions of rupees worth of assets beyond his known sources of income and added that the market value of his assets was close to Rs600 million.

NAB’s lawyer said that Cheema had kept assets under the names of his family members, including his wife Saima Ahad, mother Nusrat Afza, brother Ahmed Saood and sister Sadia Mansoor. The court has summoned witnesses in the next hearing on Jan 30.

NAB had filed a reference against Cheema in October 2018 for possessing assets beyond his known sources of income.

Cheema has property and assets worth Rs 600mn beyond his known sources of income

According to NAB, Cheema had made property worth billions of rupees in the name of his family members. It said the suspect and his family members owned over 300 kanals of agriculture land in Hafizabad, over 190 kanals in Lahore, a flat in Hill View Islamabad, two plots in FIA Employees Cooperative Housing Society Islamabad, two flats and plots in Federal Government Employees Housing Foundation Islamabad, a 10-marla plot in Faisal Town Islamabad, and a three-kanal plot on Bedian Road, Lahore. Prior to this in June 2018, NAB had filed a reference against Cheema and five others over their alleged role in Ashiana Housing Scheme scam.

In the Ashiana reference, Cheema was accused of causing a loss of Rs660m to the national exchequer. The project cost ballooned to Rs3.4bn while 61,000 people who had applied for plots in the project suffered, NAB had alleged. The former LDA director general was arrested in February 2018 over charges of misusing his authority and, with criminal intent, processing and awarding Ashiana scheme project contract worth Rs14bn to the Lahore Casa Developers, a joint venture firm that was ineligible for the entitlement. The contract, in connivance with other suspects, was awarded in violation of rules. NAB has also approved a reference against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz president and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif and former principal secretary to the ex-prime minister Fawad Hasan Fawad in the Ashiyana Housing scam.

Published in Daily Times, January 18^th 2019.