Urea scam: NAB arrests contractor in Rs880m scam

ISLAMABAD:

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has arrested Umar Farooq, a contractor allegedly involved in a Rs880 million corruption case of supplying and storing urea.

The accused, in connivance with officials of National Fertilizer Marketing Limited (NFML) and Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP), allegedly caused a huge loss to the national exchequer. According to a NAB spokesman on Saturday, arrest warrants for the accused contractor were issued by NAB director general in Rawalpindi and the accused is in custody of the bureau.

Farooq was presented before the accountability court Islamabad for obtaining his physical remand. The court granted five days of physical remand to NAB.

The bureau had previously arrested two individuals, identified as Zulfiqar Ali, store in-charge, and Abdul Ali.

The store in-charge alone caused a loss of Rs16 million approximately to the public exchequer by misappropriation of more than 10,000 imported urea fertiliser bags from an NFML store in Quetta.

The bureau received complaints against officials of NFML and TCP accusing officials of supplying under-weight bags of urea after which it launched a probe. NAB investigation teams raided several warehouses in Kasur, Karachi and Quetta and discovered underweight urea bags after which they sealed the various premises. NAB Rawalpindi has so far recovered Rs100 million in this case.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2014.