LAHORE:
The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and police arrested the frontman of the former chairman of Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) Tauqeer Sadiq in a joint operation on Sunday.
Sadiq, wanted in Rs83 billion worth of embezzlement, has so far evaded arrest. Shahzad Saleem Bhatti Advocate was accused of wheeling and dealing on behalf of Tauqir Sadiq.
Bhatti was arrested by a team of NAB sleuths and Punjab Police that had set up a picket on the road leading to his farmhouse in Burewala tehsil of Vehari district.
The team led by deputy director of NAB, Waqas Ahmad Khan recovered an unregistered car carrying the green number plate of MPA and two mobile phones.
The accused is son of Sardar Khalid Saleem Bhatti, the local Member Punjab Assembly (MPA) belonging to Pakistan Peoples Party and also served as a legal consultant of Ogra when Tauqeer Sadiq was the chairman of the authority.
Footprints of transactions
The accused had left huge footprints in the shape of transactions from his personal bank account in Burewala branch of Habib Bank Limited.
When NAB unearthed this account of Bhatti it found that transactions worth more than Rs60 million were conducted within a short period of time.
The accused was allegedly using the account for receiving and transferring graft taken for issuing licences for CNG stations, sources familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune. The NAB also detected that the accused was taking Rs2 million to Rs3 million as the frontman of Tauqeer Sadiq for issuing a licence for CNG station.
The money trail
The NAB traced the money trail that led to the accounts of Tauqeer Sadiq, his former staff officer Jawad Jameel, member finance of Ogra Mir Kamal Marri and some influential dignitaries, sources said.
Jameel is already behind bars, while Sadiq is at large and the dignitaries remain above the law until they are in government, a source said hinting at a VIP roundup after elections.
Plea bargain rejected
Down but not out, Bhatti had earlier tried to make a deal with the NAB as per provisions of accountability law that provide that if the looted public money is returned the accused may walk free.
Bhatti in an application to the NAB had offered depositing Rs6 million in the public exchequer as Voluntary Return (VR) but NAB authorities rejected his application when they realised the amount of black money was far beyond what he was offering in plea bargain.
NAB sources said that the accused was shifted to Lahore from Burewala and would be presented before the Accountability Court Lahore on Monday for a 24-hour transit remand to shift him to Islamabad where the NAB will get his physical remand from the Accountability Court Rawalpindi.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2012.
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Rs. 83 Billion lost, makes your eyes water. This is the crime of the century against Pakistan. Pursuance and recovery of this amount should be the top priority of NAB.