Daily Times

Over the years Pakistan’s bureaucracy has developed its own expertise of indulging in corruption, called white-collar crime. To proscribe corruption there are anti-corruption departments. However, if corruption is committed outside Pakistan, these departments face limitations in investigation in terms of bearing the high cost of investigation and difficulties in having access to documents and bank accounts. This is why culprits get off scot-free.
In the beginning of the coming month, two cases are to be presented before parliament’s public accounts committee. These belong to the embassy sales’ scandals that took place in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Tokyo (Japan). On both counts, the land having the embassy’s building and the ambassador’s house was illegally sold to local companies and in return kickbacks were secured allegedly by the embassy staff, especially the ambassadors.
In 2000, a directive was issued by the then chief executive of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, saying that with a view to curtailing the huge expenditure on rentals, the government should purchase or acquire offices and residences for Pakistan’s missions abroad. Consequently, the government formed an inter-ministerial committee having representatives of the ministries of foreign affairs, finance and housing and works. It is noteworthy that the directive issued by General Musharraf allowed only the purchase of offices and residences and not the sale of existing ones.
In February 2002, the then ambassador of Pakistan to Indonesia, Major General (retired) Mustafa Anwar Hussain, overstepped his authority and sold the embassy’s land and buildings to a company, Era Victoria, belonging to his Indonesian wife at a throw away price under the pretext of buying a new piece of land or building for the embassy elsewhere; he made the sale and purchase a household affair. General Hussain did not seek the obligatory prior approval from the inter-ministerial committee or even the ministry of foreign affairs of Pakistan, as the strength of General Hussain lay in being once the instructor of General Musharraf. Consequently, General Musharraf, who had taken over the country in October 1999 under the ruse of cleansing it of the menace of corruption, came to the rescue of General Hussain and overruled the objections of the inter-ministerial committee (and those of the ministry of foreign affairs), and approved the deal by countersigning it. This point exemplifies that the top military brass (i.e. army generals) is also not immune to corruption when it finds a chance to indulge in it. Secondly, the top military brass condones malicious acts by one another while it leaves no chance to besmirch civilians of their misdeeds.
Encouraged by the episode in Indonesia, Kamran Niaz, the ambassador of Pakistan to Japan, also became active and, in 2007, during the one-year extension period of his service tenure (from March 2007 to February 2008), and through another embassy officer, Asghar Ali Golo, disposed off the land along with the embassy’s building and the ambassador’s house for two main reasons as per the embassy letter Pakistan News, issue number 22/2007. First, the local government’s regulations of a 60 to 40 ratio (in respect of the covered area) were unsuitable for building a new embassy complex there. Secondly, the local government of Tokyo did not allow more than three-storey buildings there. Hence, a new piece of land had to be bought to construct the embassy premises.
In Tokyo, the embassy and the ambassador’s residence were located on a land area measuring 2249.16 square metres at Motoazabu Minato Ward, which was valued as one of the highest per square metre land areas price-wise in Tokyo by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), Japan, in 2008-2009. The MLIT measured the value of one square metre of land here against more than two million yen. On the other hand, the premises of the embassy complex where it is located currently is on land area measuring 2400.42 square metres at Minamiazabu Minato Ward, which was valued by the MLIT as one of the lowest per square metre land areas area price-wise in Tokyo in 2008-2009. The MLIT measured the value of one square metre of land here against less than one million yen. In other words, compared to the previous land, the price of the existing land is less than half. Additionally, a diplomatic mission can buy land from the host country at half the market price. This point further lowered the price of land in Minamiazabu Minato Ward to another half: less than half a million yen.
In 2007, Pakistan’s mission to Japan sold the land and the embassy’s buildings at Motoazabu Minato Ward, Tokyo, to Nomura Real Estate (and construction) Company privately without calling any bids, tenders or announcing any expression of interest through advertisements in the national dailies of Japan. Nomura relocated the embassy staff to a temporary work place and constructed a new embassy complex at Minamiazabu Minato Ward in 2008. It cannot be called a swap deal because, as per the documents of the local government (Tokyo), not Nomura but the government of Pakistan bought the new piece of land from Japan’s ministry of finance. Resultantly, one can surmise that the new piece of land in Minamiazabu Minato Ward was bought at half the market price and that, in the name of the government of Pakistan, the payment was actually made by Nomura. The then Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, countersigned to protect the deal.
Interestingly, in August 2007, Nomura obtained a no objection certificate from the local government (Tokyo) to construct an eight-storey commercial, residential building (two storeys under ground and six storeys on the ground) on the land where the Pakistani embassy was located at Motoazabu Minato Ward. Secondly, Nomura did not follow the 60 to 40 ratio rule when it constructed a residential commercial building there. Hence, one can conclude that either Nomura was smarter than Pakistan’s mission to Japan or both were in collusion with each other to share the windfall.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com