Olive plant project fraud: IHC gives lawyer last chance to appear

Court to decide on bail plea on Monday

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court on Friday ruled that he would decide an anticipatory bail plea to the suspects as per the available record on July 3 (Monday) in a case of alleged fraud in an olive plant project which reportedly caused a loss of Rs2.9 billion the national exchequer.

While giving a final opportunity to the suspect’s counsel, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani said that the bail application of Dr Nasir Mehmood would be decided on Monday as per the available record.

The directions came after Dr Mehmood’s counsel failed to appear before the court on June 30.

While probing the alleged fraud in the case  the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had booked cases against several suspects for serious irregularities and illegalities.

In the FIR, the FIA stated that two projects – the Promotion of Olive Cultivation for Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation and the Promotion of Olive Cultivation on Commercial Scale – had been conducted in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, the Punjab and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in coordination with the National Agricultural Research Council (NARC).

The FIR was lodged on the complaint of Alamgir Ahmed Khan, the senior joint secretary of the Ministry of Food Security Research.

The first project was estimated to have cost Rs382.15 million in the year 2014 while the second project was executed by the NARC Islamabad under the federal government at a cost of Rs2.480 billion in the same area.

It was alleged that serious irregularities and illegalities had been committed in these projects by awarding contracts on exorbitant rates to their cherry-picked firms which either had no experience or less than the required experience to supply olive plants.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2017.