Corruption charges: Lesco chief, GM get bail

The two are accused of carrying out outages to facilitate textile industry.

LAHORE:

A local court on Friday confirmed the post arrest bails of the chief executive and a general manager of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco).

Lesco CEO Arshad Rafique and GM (Operations) Mehboob Ali have been charged with corruption and abuse of power resulting in a massive monetary loss to the state exchequer. Their bails were confirmed against bonds of Rs20,000 each with one surety bond.

The two officials were arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on charges of carrying out prolonged unscheduled power outages to divert power from domestic and commercial feeders to the textile industry.

In previous proceedings, the counsels for Rafique and Ali had maintained that not a single piece of evidence against their clients was available on record. They claimed the petitioners have implicated their clients in a bogus case to humiliate them.

The counsels said the power outage cited by the prosecution was carried out on the orders of the Punjab chief minister to facilitate development work on roads of the Metro Bus route. The work, they said, required uprooting electricity poles in the area, making the power shutdown necessary.

On May 27, Lesco conducted an eight to 10-hour power shutdown in the Defence Housing Authority and Harbancepura neighbourhood and other nearby residential colonies. At the time, the company official claimed the shutdown was carried out due to technical issues.

Later it emerged that the May 27 power outage was unscheduled. The Lesco chief was accused of sanctioning the power shutdown to facilitate the textile industry. GM (Operation) Ali was arrested alongside his CEO for allegedly helping his boss in taking the decision.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2014.