Housing scam: PHA collector, another accused handed over to NAB for 10 days

Court told both suspects embezzled millions of rupees.

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa obtained a 10-day physical remand of Provincial Housing Authority Land Acquisition Collector Naveed Qadir and his supposed frontman Muhammad Asif on Monday for allegedly embezzling millions from an official housing scheme.

The suspects were produced before accountability court judge Tariq Yousafzai who was asked to allow a 14-day physical remand, but agreed to 10.

The court was informed by officials of NAB that the two men allegedly embezzled more than Rs18 million while purchasing land for a housing scheme in Surizai, Peshawar.

“The K-P PHA had planned a housing scheme for government employees and the general public in Surizai. PHA officials are said to have planted Muhammad Asif as a frontman and inflated prices were paid to him instead of the rightful landowners,” said a press release issued after the arrest.

It further stated that Qadir was arrested in April for suspected embezzlement in another PHA housing scheme in Mouza Darwaza, Nathiagali.

The name of both men popped up in the Darwaza scam. PHA, using the same modus operandi, allegedly paid Asif instead of the rightful landowners and bypassed government coffers. In the Darwaza housing scheme, the two suspects, along with others, allegedly embezzled over Rs400 million.

Former PHA Director General and two others had also been arrested on April 10 for allegedly misusing their authority during the acquisition of land for the ‘Housing Scheme for Government Servants and General Public’ in Abbottabad in 2012 and embezzling hundreds of millions.

Meanwhile, NAB K-P has also filed a corruption reference worth Rs10 million against Naveed Qadir and two other employees of the housing department, Pir Azam and Chaudhry Aslam, for illegally transferring a four-kanal plot in Risalpur Cantt, Nowshera.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th,2014.