PESHAWAR: Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) former member of the National Assembly Sardar Mushtaq has been booked on Wednesday along with 14 others in a reference filed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission on charges of corruption and illegal practices involving more than 137 million rupees in the acquisition of land for construction of the Workers Welfare Boards (WWB) Labour Complex in Haripur.
According to details, Director General, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission came to know about the huge embezzlement by the public office holders of the Revenue Department and WWB in active connivance of the private land owners whereby an inferior kind of land was incorrectly shown as converted into superior kind of land and caused a colossal loss to the public exchequer. Public office holders were found involved in the commission of offence by illegal determination of the price of the land with the active connivance of the land owners who had illegally enhanced the price of the acquired land in order to benefit the private land owners (co-accused). All the accused, while in league with one another, have changed the status of the land by tampering the revenue record on the basis of which the land owners had claimed a higher amount at exorbitant rates. According to investigation conducted by KPEC different modus operands were adopted to fulfil their nefarious plan for the determination of price of the land at exorbitant rates. For this purpose, the revenue record was either replaced, torn or altered and in some other cases it was tempered with, concealed or removed.
Ex-Chaiman WWB Tariq Awan, ex-DOR Haripur Latif-ur-Rehman, ex-Tehsildar Haider Zaman and ex-Patwari Amjid Shehzad and others while hand in glove with one another have dishonestly and fraudulently allowed the private land owners to gain benefit which could have been prevented by lawful exercise of power/authority. All the accused, while aiding, abetting and conspiring with one another have caused a loss of Rs 137 million to the government exchequer. It is worth mention that the case was once investigated by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) authorities but due to conspiracies of the accused requisite evidence was not received by them reluctantly the matter was closed by NAB.
Published in Daily Times, December 14th 2017.
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