For fraud: NAB arrests three for substandard supplies

13-day physical remand awarded by accountability court.

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) on Tuesday arrested three persons allegedly involved in incurring a huge loss to the national exchequer and obtained a 13-day physical remand. The accused allegedly supplied substandard equipment at exorbitant rates while using fake company names and without adopting a genuine bidding process.

Taking action on public complaints, NAB authorised an enquiry against the accused persons, which established the allegations. Workers Welfare Board (WWB) Project Officer Abdul Waheed Qureshi, litigation officer and owner of Ashraf Enterprises Muhammad Asghar Awan, and a partner in Ashraf Enterprises Manzoor Ahmad Ghauri were arrested by NAB. Two bank accounts of the accused contractors with a balance of Rs50 million have also been discovered and frozen.



As per the inquiry conducted so far, millions of rupees were paid to Asghar Awan and Manzoor Ghauri in the name of five non-registered companies, including Ashraf Enterprises. A loss of about Rs300 million has been caused to the state exchequer on account of substandard supply of generators, vacuum cleaners, electricity equipments, uniforms, and so on.

The accused persons were produced before an accountability court in Peshawar on Tuesday, where Judge Ibrahim Khan awarded NAB a 13-day physical remand.

The main accused in the scam, K-P Secretary WWB Tariq Awan, is already in NAB’s custody in another case regarding scholarship fraud in WWB.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2014.