PHOTO: FILE
The Ministry of Commerce Employees Cooperative Housing Society (MOCECHS) was launched in 1987, but remains incomplete after the passage of almost 30 years, leaving over 7,000 members in wait.
The delay has been blamed on alleged corruption by MOCECHS president Rana Ghulam Fareed, and MOCECHS Secretary Raja Adnan Aslam, who is also the additional legal adviser of the CDA – and several other members of the society.
Aslam is a close relative of a former prime minister.
He has regularly appeared before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in his capacity as the CDA’s lawyer. On Saturday, he was sent to jail on judicial remand after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested him and produced before an accountability court.
Aslam, as MOCECHS secretary, is accused of approving escalation on development works in the society in 2009 in an unauthorised way and in excess of the authorised rates published in the statistical bulletin.
The NAB inquiry revealed that Aslam, in connivance with other members of the board, caused a loss of Rs209.70 million to the society on through the unauthorised escalation. To add insult to injury, the report said, he had approved escalation on items on which escalation was already paid and on items on which it was not allowed.
He was also accused of appointing a project engineer who only held a diploma and lacked accreditation from the Pakistan Engineering Council as a consultant and was not registered as a professional engineer.
Moreover, he allegedly did not frame service rules for hiring officers, and he hired engineers without entering into formal agreements or specifying job responsibilities. As the secretary, NAB said, he was responsible for maintenance of records, but important records pertaining to his previous tenure from 2008-11 are not available in the society.
They said Aslam never raised objections to the unavailability of records. The contractor for the society, Raja Muhammad Ishaq, who had benefitted from the excess escalation, has already been arrested and is in judicial custody. Interestingly, on February 20, 2012, Fareed had lodged an FIR against Aslam and his father, who was general secretary of the society before him, on charges of cheating and forgery.
In the FIR, Fareed had alleged that the father and son were allegedly accused of Rs160 million worth of financial impropriety. The FIR was registered on the basis of an inquiry report penned by the ICT Saddar assistant commissioner, who had recommended the initiation of proceedings against the management committee for carrying out development work without any formal approval or no-objection certificate.
But in March 2012, Fareed and Aslam reached a compromise. One of the clauses of the compromise deed stated that “from today, both parties will safeguard each other’s rights and neither will initiate any legal criminal proceedings against each other in future.” Subsequently, no recovery could be made.
The issue surfaced after four members of the society – Muhammad Ali Azam, Abdul Waheed, Asif Nadeem and Abdul Hameed – filed a complaint with the NAB director general stating that Fareed prepared “bogus allotments” for over 900 plots in the society “causing losses of over a billion” rupees. The members have accused Fareed, Aslam and several others of embezzlement and depriving thousands of people, from their legitimate rights to property which they paid for decades ago.
Islamabad Mayor and CDA Chairman Sheikh Anser Aziz also questioned why a former CDA chairman hired Aslam, noting that he had a “direct conflict of interest” because he held an important position in the civic body and the society.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 23rd, 2016.
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