Toothless tiger?

LAHORE: The Special Investigation Unit of the Anti Corruption Department of the Punjab is in the spotlight. The Punjab government has just referred two high-profile corruption cases against senior bureaucrats to the SIU. However, the legality of the unit’s operations are still suspect.

Senior officials seeking anonymity say the unit is not covered by the Anti Corruption Establishment Rules (ACER) of 1975. As such, they say, the unit cannot initiate an inquiry or investigate corruption cases registered against anyone.

The SIU is the brainchild of the newly-appointed ACE director general Kazim Ali Malik. Himself a retired judge, Malik wanted a separate unit set up to investigate high-profile corruption cases being pursued by the provincial government.

To ensure transparency and to render the officers of the unit impervious to political influence from serving officials under investigation, reveal insiders, Malik suggested the hiring of retired officers for the SIU.

The plan the DG drew up had allowances for the contractual hiring of two retired judicial officers and a retired officer from the police, the Provincial Civil Service (PCS) as well as an engineer.

Here came the first legal snag. The ACE rules take a dim view of hiring retired officers and prescribe the hiring of serving officials. “Retired officers will not normally be inducted into the establishment,” reads rule 15.

To get around this, ACE sought a memo from the regulation wing of the Services and General Administration Department (S&GAD).

By issuing an interdepartmental notification, S&GAD appointed four retired persons against the positions available in the SIU. These people included retired judicial officers Sher Zaheer Ahmed Khan and Sakhi Muhammad Kahut, retired policeman Abdul Khaliq Khan and retired PCS officer Nasir Javed Basra. The four were offered Management Professional-III pay scale (a level comparable to BPS 21/22) along with other facilities. The group was housed in the Anti Corruption directorate and provided the necessary staff and equipment.

But senior officials in the know insist that these appointments are in violation of the ACE rules. “In order to hire these people, the ACE rules should have been amended to give cover to the SIU, which did not happen. As such, the status and legality of the SIU are still under a cloud,” a senior official told The Express Tribune.

This official also explains some of the immediate procedural hitches in the functioning of the SIU. “The contract employees hired for the SIU don’t have the authority to summon the accused and conduct hearings,” he says. “To empower them, the provincial government, through the cabinet and the legislature, will have to amend the ACE rules to define the designations, functions and powers of these officials.”

It’s not just the top-level officers who stand affected. According to ACE rules, he says, only a circle officer not below the rank of police inspector, assistant director, deputy director or director can initiate an inquiry or investigate cases of corruption. Problem is, the circle officer who heads the anti corruption police station in every district is of the rank of an SHO of the police. “As such, these circle officers aren’t authorised to hold inquiries or interrogate suspects,” says the official. “How will they conduct correspondence or appear in a court of law on behalf of the government? To grant them such powers, the rules will need to be amended.”

But the additional DG of ACE Dr Saleh Tahir stands by the SIU and its ability to investigate and prosecute higher officials and prominent politicians involved in corruption cases worth millions of rupees. “The government had outlined criteria for the working of the unit,” he insists. “There was no need to amend the rules.”

Meanwhile, the cases handed over to the SIU by the ACE DG with the approval of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif are high-profile enough to guarantee public interest and media scrutiny. The first involves former chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi who stands accused of misusing Rs2.5 billion of public monies for a political campaign. The case has lain with the ACE since February 2009. The second is about corruption and embezzlement worth a whopping Rs318 million in the Faisalabad Development Authority, which was filed in March 2009.

As investigations begin, cautions the insider, all eyes will be on the SIU. To render themselves above reproach, the unit will have to set its legal affairs in order, he says.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2010.