ISLAMABAD – The interior ministry has placed the name of former Minister for Railways retired Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi and three other former generals on the Exit Control List (ECL) in line with the request of National Accountability Bureau.
The names of railways’ former Chairman retired Lt Gen Saeed-uz-Zafar, former General Manager retired Maj Gen Hamid Hasan Butt and former member retired Brig Akhtar Ali Baig had also been put on the ECL as they are accused of illegally transferring 140 acres of prime railway land in Lahore to a Malaysian firm for development of a golf course called Royal Palms Gold and Country Club at throwaway rates, causing a loss of about Rs2.16 billion to the national exchequer.
The Islamabad High Court had last week given directives that retired military officers, who struck the deal during the Musharraf government in 2001, could not hide behind the army’s accountability process.
The graft-buster has now decided to reopen the corruption reference against the four retired senior army officers although they remained low for more than a decade.
https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/pakistan/nab-in-action-against-bigwigs-over-corruption/
A spokesman for the bureau had said that a meeting of NAB officials had authorised the filing of a reference against four former generals, railways’ former General Manager Iqbal Samad Khan, former member Khursheed Ahmed Khan, former director Abdul Ghaffar and former superintendent Mohammad Ramzan Sheikh, as well as Husnain Construction Company director Pervaiz Latif Qureshi, the chief executive of Unicon Consulting Services, the director of Max Corp Development, Malaysia, and others for misuse of authority and inflicting huge losses to the national exchequer, Dawn News reported.
Lt Gen Qazi served as Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence and Lt Gen Zafar as Peshawar corps commander and the military officials under question were summoned by NAB in the same case in 2012 but nothing was done against them.
The Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly had on Sept 14, 2012 called for cancelling the controversial agreement, holding a fresh bidding for the land and taking strict disciplinary action against the former bosses of railways, including the retired generals, who ratified the agreement.
