Recently, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) requested all persons who had acquired rights to serviced apartments in the One Constitution Avenue (OCA) to apply for getting back the money they had paid to the builder. On the face of it, this appears to be a genuine gesture of concern from our civic authority. However, upon careful analysis, you see another scheme in the making to cheat the general public. In this new scheme not only will the people have to pay for CDA’s wrongdoings, they will also be assisting the authority in conducting a mega-scam through re-auction of the already built OCA Towers. Firstly, CDA is misleading the public by requesting those who have invested in serviced apartments in OCA to apply for refunds. In its ruling in the OCA case, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had directed the CDA and the government to provide compensation to members of the general public who were allowed by the CDA to invest in OCA. Thus, they were misled by the CDA directly. This means the CDA is guilty of negligence. The question of how the compensation amount will be calculated is the subject of a further writ petition filed before the IHC by victims of the OCA debacle. In this writ petition, the IHC has already directed CDA, the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) and the Ministry of Interior to submit a report over the mechanism of calculating compensation. The court has also asked the departments to reveal what they intend to do with 403 other buildings which are also violating CDA laws, including the Centaurus Mall. This report has not yet been filed. However, CDA is asking people to file compensation claims. Only 5 out of 240 affectees of the OCA case filed refund claims because the matter is still pending in courts. The very formula for compensation has to be decided as well as the pending appeals against the original judgement of the IHC. An important question that comes to mind is why is the CDA so interested in securing refund claims from the 240 affectees? The answer is simple: the IHC in its judgement of the OCA case (Jan 27, 2017), held CDA responsible for “regulatory failure, negligence and breaching its fiduciary duties and obligations in holding, disposing and managing the property vested in it for benefit of the people of Pakistan”. The judgement further reprimanded CDA officials for “bending over backwards by extending undue benefits to the builder in complete disregard of mandatory regulations….to defraud and deceive members of the general public”. As a follow-up to this judgement, the FIA is conducting investigations against CDA staff for allowing “gross illegalities, building plan violations…and selling apartments without obtaining any approval from CDA”. If the CDA is able to bring the refund claims (at the six year old rates) to the court, it will then try to re-auction the land and the building at five or six times the original value. The persons who acquired valuable rights to the apartments six years ago will be paid their cost price as compensation and the profit generated from such a transaction will go to the CDA. The CDA officials will also stand exonerated. If we consider the strong words used by IHC judgement against CDA, it will also be not farfetched to imagine that certain stakeholders inside and outside the CDA are waiting for an opportunity of re-auctioning of the OCA land and buildings to make more money through the entrenched system of bribes and undue benefits in CDA as alluded to in the IHC judgement. By some accounts, the price of the land itself has increased tenfold since 2004. The apartments alone have doubled in value over the last six years since they were acquired by people. Considering the past history of the CDA, it may not be wrong to assume that CDA is again scheming with the land mafia and potential bidders to defraud public through the re-auction of the OCA land and buildings. These actors are working closely with CDA to get rid of any legal obligations towards the original acquirers of rights to these apartments, take over the buildings constructed with the money of original investors and resell them at a profit. This will give yet another opportunity to the corrupt elements in and around CDA to exercise their craft and defraud public off their hard earned money. On top of this is the unresolved mystery of shutting down OCA; a matter which is yet undecided. The CDA originally cancelled the allotment of the plot, claiming the builder had defaulted in its payment obligations and violated other terms of the lease agreement the land. The Interior minister claimed publicly that the building was a security risk to the nearby Red Zone buildings along the Constitution Avenue. The IHC, on the other hand, decided that the allotment of the land when done was invalid because it lacked transparency since the particulars given in the public advertisement for auction were added to in the terms of the allotment and lease to the builder. These are three distinct reasons. If the building is a security risk, then there can be no alternative but to raze it and not to build anything on the land in the future. However, the CDA chairman stated in an interview that it was an asset and they intended to reuse it. The CDA has been asked multiple times by the IHC during the ongoing hearings as to what it intends to do with the building. To this day, no specific answer has been given. In fact, CDA has avoided answering the question. At least now it has become clear why they have refused to make a clear statement in court: it will negate all the false statements and claims made by CDA and the Interior Ministry in the past. CDA needs to wake-up to the fact that we are living in a new era in Pakistan. Pakistan has an independent judiciary, which seriously considers public interest issues. In its OCA judgement in January 2017, IHC declared that “…the Authority (CDA) has evidently breached its fiduciary duties and obligations in holding, disposing and managing the property vested in it for the benefit of the people of Pakistan”. Why did the CDA wait till the apartments were fully constructed and all the payments were complete to cancel the project? Why was the CDA unaware of the construction work that was going on right in front of its offices? The CDA is advised to change its mode of conducting business and start working in the interest of public instead of hatching new schemes to defraud citizens of Pakistan. The authority is further advised to stop harassing the people who own the flats and not to make false allegations about them. Written by Ahsan Azim in Saudi Arabia and Shelale Abbasi in Pakistan on behalf of owners of apartments in OCA Published in Daily Times, July 22nd , 2017.