Law department caught with hand in the cookie jar as fabricated records surface

Chief secret­ary summon­ed today over embezz­led funds worth millio­ns of rupees.

KARACHI: The government’s accounting watchdog expressed its “dismay” over fabricated records produced by the Sindh law department on how much it had spent in courts across the province.

Taking serious note of these financial irregularities, the chief of the Public Accounts Committee, Jam Tamachi Unar, regretted the performance of the provincial government departments and said officials were not serious about keeping records.

He said that millions of rupees are being embezzled and officials are simply trying to cover up their misdeeds by producing fake records. “We warn them to give up this practice. The PAC is the highest forum for accountability of public assets and will continue to monitor them,” he remarked. “I do not know how governance will come if such practices continue.”

The committee decided to summon the Sindh chief secretary, who is the province’s top bureaucrat, on Thursday. “We should at least inform him of what is going in government departments,” Unar said. “Besides, we should discuss how to make these departments functional.”

Unar’s ire was incurred on the information provided by Audit Director General Ghulam Akbar Sohu who had told the committee that the law department and its officials have not maintained any proper record of the millions of rupees spent at the Sindh High Court, sessions courts and other lower courts. “The officials have now produced vouchers for those expenses, which were incurred about eight years ago,” he said. But this was suspect as at the time of the audit no proper record was presented and the cash book of the Sindh High Court did not have the signatures of the officials from 2004 to 2006.

“During the audit we had found that all the pages of the cash book were blank after page 97 as there was no record of expenses from 2004 to 2005,” he said. Even the receipt and payment transactions were not entered properly. “There is no record of transactions worth around Rs70.33 million for 2006-2007,” he revealed.

The department wasn’t able to show any supporting documents on a suspicious Rs1.22 million spent by the office of the advocate general of Sindh during 2004 to 2007. Here too there were no papers at the time of the audit but later officers turned up with eight-year-old vouchers, which appeared to be fake.

Just as bad was the office of the additional advocate general in Sukkur which also skipped out making entries in the cash book. Around Rs11.37 million was embezzled from 2004 to 2007.  Quoting from the statements officials made, the DG said that accounts clerk Aurangzaib Malik had committed the fraud and managed to escape along with the cash book.

There is no record of Rs0.8 million spent on books either.

Law Secretary Ghulam Nabi Shah said that the matter was reported to the Sukkur anti-corruption establishment which registered an FIR. Shah also referred to the suspicious vouchers produced by the high courts and other lower courts. He clarified that he had nothing to do with courts affairs, which according to him were independent in their workings.

Unar directed the committee’s secretary to write to the registrar of the Sindh High Court, asking him to brief them and advise on how they could tackle the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th,  2011.