The arrested are alleged to have been involved with a complex scam known as ‘china cutting’ that has netted them billions of rupees over 15 years. They bypassed the mandatory auction of land, split it into smaller plots and sold the plots at deflated prices, and then later aggregated the plots again and resold them to a developer for a far higher price making huge profits by so doing. NAB was also busy a fortnight earlier and had arrested the secretary of the excise and taxation department as well as, somewhat ironically, the director of the anti-corruption department.
We warmly welcome these developments. Unless institutionalised corruption is tackled directly at the most senior level, it will never be defeated. Arresting a few of the small fry takes nobody anywhere. The culture of impunity that surrounds corrupt officials is not just confined to Karachi; it is a countrywide phenomenon. There is no secret about it, the corruption is well known and the common man has little choice but to pay the going rate to corrupt officials. Now let us see prosecutions and convictions on the back of these arrests, as these crooks must not be allowed to wriggle away.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 17th, 2015.
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