ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has decided to summon the former chairman of National High Authority (NHA), Shahid Ashraf Tarar, and contractors of the Karachi-Lahore Motorway Abdul Hakeem section to investigate alleged corruption of Rs24 billion in the award of contract for Rs148 billion for building motorway in August 2015.
According to a senior official of NAB, the bureau will summon the former chairman of NHA, who is now representing Pakistan as the executive director of the World Bank for next three years.
He said that NAB had started inquiry into alleged irregularities in the project which will be linked with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), M-4 (Pindi Bhattian-Gojra-Shorkot-Khanewal and Multan Motorway sections).
The official said that the inquiry against officers concerned of the NHA had been started on the basis of a complaint of the Transparency International (TI) and some evidence collected by NAB during a Complaint Verification (CV) process.
“We started inquiry into the Karachi-Lahore section of Motorway project after we found some evidences during the CV process,” the official claimed.
The official said that the inquiry had been ordered against the NHA management for their alleged corruption in awarding the contract in violation of laid-down laws/rules on exorbitant rates and causing alleged loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer.
Interestingly, the Transparency International (TI) had lodged the complaint of alleged corruption in the project two years ago, but the former chairman of NAB, Qamar Zaman Chaudhry, who was reportedly quite close to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, did not take any action, but incumbent NAB chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal had taken a serious notice of the issue and ordered an inquiry into the matter.
“If some credible evidences are found during the investigation, it will be a fit case for filing another reference against the present government,” the official said.
