PESHAWAR: An Accountability Court on Friday remanded Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s former mineral minister Mehmood Zeb and nine others, who were arrested over the illegal allotment of government reservoirs of phosphate in the province, in the custody of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for 12 days.
PPP’s former provincial minister Mehmood Zeb and the other accused were presented before the accountability court amid strict security measures.
NAB officials had requested for a 15-day remand of the suspects on charges of misuse of authority and other corruption charges.
The NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alleges that Mahmood Zeb, who was a leader of PPP and was provincial minister for technical education, industries and mineral department in the previous provincial government, in connivance with the other nine suspects had misused his authority in illegal allotment of 500 acres of proven deposit of phosphate to a female school teacher, Rukhsana Javed, who illegally excavated phosphate in collaboration with the first cousin of the minister Ehtishamul Mulk and jointly caused a loss of Rs360 million to the national exchequer.
The other nine suspects in the case are the then secretary technical education and minerals, Shah Wali Khan; the then additional secretary of the department, Asamtullah Khan Ghandapur, presently serving as commissioner Bannu division; a section officer, Farhad Ali; a deputy director of the department, Khan Badshah; a geologist at the directorate of mines and minerals, Nauroze Khan; a senior inspector of mines presently serving as commissioner mines, Ziarat Khan; the then director licensing of minerals department, Shakirullah; an assistant director (litigation) of mineral department, Pervaiz Khan; and an assistant director, Ehtishamul Mulk.
The NAB said the inquiry revealed that the Sarhad Development Authority held 1200 acres of phosphate reservoirs under the 1985-2005 mining lease.
