Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: CDA Chairman Shaikh Ansar Aziz has reiterated his resolve to reach at bottom of the Safa Gold Mall corruption scandal and vowed to retrieve all plundered public wealth to the national kitty while pursuing a zero tolerance policy against the corrupt mafia.

While talking to Daily Times by phone , the CDA Chairman cum Mayor of the capital, Islamabad Shaikh Ansar Aziz said that an internal inquiry report would be completed within the next few weeks as the previous inquiry report was rejected owing to its unsatisfactory findings filled with many flaws and loopholes.

The senior officers concerned permitted the Safa Gold Mall owner to built extra three storeys on the site and this could not have happened without the connivance of the senior hierarchy of the civic entity and the incumbent administration wanted to reach at the real delinquents. He elaborated the reasons behind the reconstitution of the probe committee.

Sheikh Ansar Aziz noted that in the previous report only two senior officers were held responsible and some big fish were spared and now the committee under a senior officer of the CDA was looking at all aspects of the scam and all the characters would be brought to the eyes of the public.

When his attention was drawn that the main culprit of this scam, Ghulam Murtaza Malik, was going to retire from the CDA within the next two months and he may flee from the clutches of the law then the chairman said that he was well aware of his retirement but the findings of the probe committee were likely to finalised very soon and if he was found guilty in the report he would have to face the music according to the laws of the state.

He said that during the last hearing of the case in Islamabad High Court, the CDA Member has submitted his statement that the CDA had asked the owner of the Safa Gold Mall to deposit more than 2.5 billion rupees for the regularisation of extra storeys that were built illegally while breaching the auction agreement

It is pertinent to mention here that in the previous internal investigation committee the main culprits including senior officer Sarwar Sindho, Director General Planning CDA, was exonerated from all charges and Ghulam Murtaza Malik and Ammar Idrees were held responsible for the irregularities committed in the Safa Gold Mall case

The Chairman CDA also said the civic body had been cooperating with the NAB by providing them all the relevant documents and guidelines in all corruption scam and if the NAB had failed to conclude its investigation in time then the CDA could not be held responsible.

The chairman lamented that a wrong impression had been created that the owner of the Safa Gold Mall belonged to his native village situated in Sargodha District and said as the head of the civic body “I had already directed the departments concerned to pursue the case in the courts vigorously and retrieved all the plundered public wealth,” he clarified.

The Safa Gold Mall was constructed at the site of the CDA health directorate during the Zardari regime and this plot was also sold out at a throwaway cost causing a huge losses to the national exchequer. NAB has been investigating this corruption scam for the last many years but ironically it could not concluded for reasons best known to the people sitting in the NAB offices.