Minister targets senior bureaucrat after whistleblowing on SOE Act misuse

ISLAMABAD: Instead of initiating action against a CEO who amassed huge amount by exploiting the IMF-dictated State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Act 2023, the federal minister concerned has moved against a senior civil servant who had reported the matter to the Prime Minister’s Office.

A confidential letter written by the minister to his secretary on August 26, after The News published its first report on the misuse of SOEs Act, has now been leaked to media houses.

The minister’s letter is against the senior bureaucrat, currently posted in a higher office, accusing him of “repeated violations” of the SOEs Act and Prime Minister’s Office directives during his earlier role as Special Secretary in the ministry. The same officer had earlier informed the PM Office about the SOE scandal.

In the letter, the minister claimed that the bureaucrat attended more than 15 board and sub-committee meetings of the SOE without consulting the ministry, allegedly in contravention of PM Office guidelines. This is the same SOE whose CEO received Rs355 million in salary and benefits in just 32 months before moving on to another SOE under the same ministry.

The minister directed that all board decisions and recommendations in which the bureaucrat participated be considered “null and void” and that the SOE should not entertain any input from him in the future. He also ordered that the ex-officio board seat of the SOE be immediately reassigned to the senior-most serving officer of the ministry, insisting that the bureaucrat’s involvement had been “in his personal capacity, and not as the policy position of the ministry”.

Contrary to the minister’s stance, sources insist that the letter is an attempt to victimise the officer who had earlier informed the Prime Minister’s Office about how the SOE Act was being manipulated to benefit select CEOs of state-owned enterprises. “Instead of probing the CEO who made hundreds of millions under the cover of law, the minister has chosen to target the officer who raised the alarm,” commented a source.

Another source said the prime minister should immediately order a high-level inquiry into the matter to establish whether the minister or the bureaucrat is right.

The SOE Act 2023 was passed as part of IMF conditionalities, with the stated aim of improving governance, transparency, and efficiency of loss-making state-owned enterprises. However, as earlier reported by The News, the law has been widely abused by SOE boards and executives to grant themselves extraordinary financial perks, while their institutions continue to perform poorly. The prime minister has though constituted a high-level committee to review governance issues and financial irregularities in SOEs in the light of the 2023 Act, the matter relating to what has now emerged as a serious dispute between a minister and bureaucrat still awaits a fair probe.