In custody : NAB arrests former WWB chairman, four others

Has accused them of illegally awarding contracts.

PESHAWAR: National Accountability Bureau Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa arrested five people, including the former chairman of Workers Welfare Board Azizur Rehman, on Wednesday for allegedly awarding illegal contracts.

According to a handout issued by the bureau, the current and former finance directors for WWB, Muhammad Ibrar Hussain and Muhammad Imran, have also been taken into custody. The other two individuals have been identified as Muhammad Akbar Awan — owner of Ashraf Enterprises — and Irfan Qureshi.

They were presented before an accountability court and NAB obtained a 12-day physical remand of the suspects.

“The officials had illegally awarded contracts worth Rs3.5 billion to procure equipment at exorbitant rates,” read the NAB statement. “The contracts resulted in the substandard supply of equipment and huge losses to the exchequer.”

According to the handout, Rehman had delegated his administrative and financial powers to the then secretary of WWB, Tariq Awan. NAB has already arrested Tariq.

“Rehman illegally handed over the administrative affairs of the board to Tariq with mala fide intention,” the statement added. “The suspects opened bank accounts and made a series of transactions to unregistered supply firms. Some of the firms were unregistered and did not have any prior experience of supplying equipment to a government department. Furthermore, most of these firms did not exist.”

Hand in glove

The document added during their tenure as WWB’s finance directors, Imran and Hussain failed to exercise their authority to prevent losses to the exchequer. “They issued cheques to fraudulent contractors without any due diligence,” the handout added.

Similarly, Qureshi and Muhammad Akbar were also hand in glove with WWB officials and helped secure contracts at exorbitant rates.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th,  2015.