Corruption charges: Transparency International chief faces yet another probe

Complaint lodged with the FIA says Adil Gilani’s past is full of wrongdoings.

LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has initiated another inquiry against chairman of the Pakistan chapter of the Transparency International Syed Adil Gilani, The Express Tribune learnt reliably on Wednesday.

According to contents of a complaint lodged by Abdul Wahid, Chief Executive of the Far East Oriental Trading Company (Pvt) Ltd addressed to Director FIA, Punjab: “Adil Gilani’s past is chequered with massive wrongdoings and allegations of fraud … while he was (working as) a government employee. We take this opportunity to shed light on the not-so-respectful past of the chairman of the Transparency International Pakistan. (He) was a government servant working in the Karachi Development Authority and was involved in massive frauds, including the award of construction contract for the FTC building in Karachi.”

The letter said that when pressure from investigating agencies became unbearable, he absconded to Africa where he remained for a considerable period.

After matters settled down, he returned to Pakistan and joined Karachi Port Trust (KPT). Even during his stint at the KPT, Gilani was “reprimanded numerous times and actively investigated for corruption charges by the FIA and NAB”.

“The most glaring case of corruption by Adil Gilani was that of the privatisation of KPT assets.”

“Gilani served as a project manager in KPT for many years and was also associated with the privatisation of a port-related project which was later to become Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT).  One of the companies bidding for this project was Premier Mercantile Services Ltd which was owned by Captain (retd) Haleem Siddiqui, Gilani being the project manager, had in-depth knowledge of this project as well as access to the confidential bidding information of all the various bidding parties.

Subsequently he worked as a “consultant” with leading business houses of Pakistan, and met Qasim Ameen Dada.

“Furthermore, Gilani goes out of his way to protect a construction interest of a certain influential group. He even went out of his way to utilise the platform of Transparency International to file a lawsuit against Emaar Giga Karchi Limited, which secured a huge construction project by outdoing/outcompeting the influential group.”

The letter further alleged that through TIP, Adil Gilani got himself “embedded in all major government institutions on the pretext of promoting transparency whereby he initially threatened and acted against responsible government officials by publishing (negative) articles and news reports.

After (running) a strong smear campaign, Gilani would offer to clear government officers and their departments as long as they signed a memorandum of understanding with Transparency International, allowing Gilani to become the de facto approver of government bids. He would, therefore, collude with the highest bidder and get terms of the bidding (contract) in (his) favour.”

“By using this model, Gilani (was able to) penetrate into various government organisations like PIA, KPT, TDAP and many others. Under the guise of transparency, he hijacked government offices and is exercising blatant and wholesale corruption.

A case in point of this modus operandi has been in the TDAP’s award of the contract to design, build and operate the Pakistan Pavilion at Expo 2010, Shanghai.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th,  2011.