Three LDA officials held over corruption charges

LAHORE:

The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) arrested three senior LDA officers over charges of corruption on Friday. These officers allegedly took a bribe of Rs3 million for the illegal issuance of a completion certificate.

ACE investigated the matter and when the charges were proven, a case was registered against the LDA officers and they were arrested. The officers arrested by ACE were identified as Director Town Planning Wing II LDA Salman Mahfouz, Deputy Director Tayyab Ali, Assistant Director Inayatullah and Clerk Ijaz Sattar.

The accused reportedly took a bribe of Rs3 million to approve the plan and caused a loss of around Rs86.073 million to the national exchequer. LDA Clerk Ijaz Sattar admitted to receiving and delivering the bribe money to the accused officers.

Later on, the accused officers removed the original file from the records to cover up the bribery, but the ACE team were able to recover the deleted files.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 8^th, 2023.