NAB takes up Rs5 billion land scam: As case unfolds, hunt on for mystery land lessee

Fictitious address provided for company that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government gave the land to.

ISLAMABAD: Following the surfacing of more inconsistencies, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has launched investigations into a Rs5billion land allotment scam in Khyber-Pakthunkhwa involving the provincial government.

It has now been revealed that the private construction firm that was doled out 170 acres of an olive research station at a throwaway price had used a fictitious Rawalpindi address.

Meanwhile, the Rawalpindi-based ‘mystery man’, Javed Iqbal, who was named as the owner of the construction firm, is said to have gone missing.

A NAB team was said to have visited the site of olive research station of Sangbhatti on Mardan-Swabi road to collect information from the concerned officials. According to sources, NAB Peshawar was expected to investigate top officials of the Auqaf Department, particularly its secretary Nauman Jadoon and administrator Inaam Khan, who had moved the official summaries to chief minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti to give research farm land to Mr Javed Iqbal.

A top official of Pakistan Oilseed Development Board (PODB) confirmed to The Express Tribune that NAB officials had contacted them to get the basic information about the whole scam and claimed that the formal investigations were under way.

The land was leased to PODB in 2002 on a ten-year contract to establish a olive research farm with the help of Turkey and Italy. The more than 20,000 olive trees planted there were only now bearing fruit when this case broke out.

After The Express Tribune broke the story, information minister K-P Mian Iftikhar Hussain announced that the provincial government had cancelled the new lease that was in the name of Javed Iqbal, and proposed to grant the lease of the research farm through open auction

However, he did not give any reason why the government should auction a research farm station where millions of rupees have been spent to grow 20,000 olive trees. Likewise, Mr Hussain was not ready to disclose the real identity of Javed Iqbal.

It has now been revealed that no house exists at the address provided for the man who the land lease was granted to by the government (155-A Bank Road Saddar, Rawalpindi). In fact, the address itself is fictitious.

Sources said that investigations are now under way to determine the authenticity and credentials of the construction firm that was given the lucrative deal by the provincial government.

The sources further added that the deal was cancelled by the provincial government for fear of the exposure of the real identity of Javed Iqbal. Uncovering the identity of the mystery man, they said, will lead straight to the doors of some important ANP leaders.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2010.