Necklace donated by Turkish PM’s wife for flood victims goes missing

PPP government sold ornament to NADRA chief, who later reportedly delivered the framed necklace to the PM house

ISLAMABAD:

A necklace donated by wife of Turkish Prime Minister for the flood affected people has gone missing from the stores of National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, minister for interior, told reporters that he has asked Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to launch an inquiry into the matter.

The necklace was donated by the wife of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan when she visited Pakistan to help flood affected people in 2010.

Interestingly, instead of going for an open auction, the PPP government sold the ornament to NADRA  for Rs1.5 million.

An official of NADRA told The Express Tribune that there are some unconfirmed reports that then NADRA chief later delivered the framed necklace to the PM’s house.

Barred from entering NADRA

Nisar said there was a complete ban on foreigners visiting NADRA without permission from the interior ministry. “Even ambassadors cannot visit NADRA employees without permission from the ministry,” he said.

The government is investigating reports that some important data has been shifted by some foreign NGOs from Pakistan to foreign countries. Similarly thousands of CNICs which were issued to foreigners by NADRA employees have been detected.

Around 500 employees of NADRA are suspected to be a part of this scam. Nisar said action against these employees will be taken once the investigation is completed. However, he announced that those who cooperate might be shown some leniency.

Flawed verification of vote audit

The minister claimed that some of the employees deputed to verify voter thumb impressions from counterfoils of ballot papers, deliberately gave incorrect reports.

The minister said in one of such cases the initial report for a constituency contained 3,000 bogus votes. However once NADRA verified these votes they turned out valid, he said.

Headway in Axact scam

Answering a question, the minister said that additional evidence has come up in the Axact scam from some foreign countries.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2015.