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Former army chief’s brother rejects NAB charges

LAHORE: Kamran Kayani — a brother of former army chief Ashfaque Parvez Kayani and proclaimed offender in the DHA City land scam — has approached the Lahore High Court with a plea that denies all the allegations levelled against him by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

An accountability court in January last year had declared him a proclaimed offender in the scam worth billions of rupees.

“I have been unlawfully implicated by NAB in two references,” Kayani said in two petitions filed in the court through Advocate Nadeem Kausar.

The other reference Kayani faces is that of Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme scam.

An accountability court declared Kayani a proclaimed offender in 2016 while NAB was clueless about his whereabouts.

Two other suspects in the DHA City scam, Hammad Arshad and retired Brig Khalid Nazir Butt, have already been indicted.

Last year an accountability court declared Kamran Kayani a proclaimed offender in the DHA City land scam

NAB alleged that Globaco (Pvt) Ltd of Arshad secured a contract from DHA-EME in 2009 to acquire 25,000 kanals of land for establishment of DHA City. However, the company failed to acquire the agreed land and issued allotment letters and collected around Rs15.47 billion from the people. The suspect allegedly transferred the amount to his personal accounts and used the same for other business.

Butt was a former project director of DHA City and he is accused of misusing his office and rendering illegal benefits to Arshad.

The bureau also alleged that Elysium Holdings Pakistan Limited of Kamran Kayani was a facilitator and beneficiary of the scam.

The Ashiana reference was mainly filed against PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif for misusing his powers as the chief minister of Punjab.

The bureau said that Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) following due approval of its Board of Directors (BoD) awarded a contract for infrastructure development of Ashiana-i-Iqbal housing scheme to successful bidder namely M/S Ch. A. Latif & Sons in 2013.

It said the PLDC issued Rs75 million as mobilization advance to the contractor company whereas no complaint had been received by the company’s BoD against the bidding process.

However, Mr Sharif acting unlawfully on a so-called complaint assumed powers of the PLDC’s BoD and referred the matter to Anti-Corruption Establishment to kneel down the successful bidder.

The bureau said the investigation revealed that a company namely CONPRO Services (Pvt) Limited, which filed the so-called complaint, had allegedly bribed the then Punjab secretary implementation Fawad Hassan Fawad. And the complainant company, as per the bureau, was believed to be owned by Kayani.

However, in his petition, Kayani rejected this allegation and claimed he had not participated in the bid for Ashiana scheme. He submitted that the Mr Sharif and Mr Fawad had not cancelled the contract but the contractor/company had actually withdrawn it.

About the DHA-City, he claimed in the petition that the NAB chairman had unlawfully nominated him in the reference. He further claimed that he had already sold his company to Hammad Arshad and requested the court to set aside all actions of NAB against him for being illegal.

A two-judge bench comprising Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh will take up the petitions of Kayani on Monday as “objection case”. The registrar’s office has objected to maintainability of the petitions since the petitioner is a proclaimed offender.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2020



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