Court acquits six accused of Rs1.5bn corruption charges

An accountability court on Friday exonerated six accused from the charge of misappropriation of over Rs1.5 billion customs tax and duty collections.

Judge Tasneem Sultana of Accountability Court-VI acquitted Muzaffar Ali Zuberi, incharge of the Air Freight Unit (AFU) at the National Bank of Pakistan’s airport branch, Muhammad Shakeel, Muhammad Afzal, Waqas Ahmed Khan, Asif Siddiqui, and Sarwar Khan in a reference filed against by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for allegedly misappropriating customs funds between 2008 and 2013.

The judge pronounced her verdict after recording evidence and final arguments from both defence and prosecution sides. According to the national graft buster, Zuberi during his posting as the AFU incharge at the NBP Airport Branch between 2008 and 2013 deployed co-accused Siddiqui as security guard and Ahmed at the AFU Booth and got these private persons involved in the clearance of selected goods declarations on a credit basis and illegally pocketed daily cash collections instead of depositing into two bank accounts used for depositing duties and taxes in cash and pay orders.

It said both the accounts were being operated by the Custom Department and during 2009-2013, a huge amount of customs collections from the said accounts were misappropriated/embezzled, adding that the main accused, Zuberi, was involved in running a parallel banking system illegally without having any authority transferred a huge amount to private bank accounts.

The prosecution alleged that Ahmed, a private person, acted as Zuberi’s frontman at the AFU Booth and got involved in making illegal debit and credit vouchers. Zuberi, Siddiqui and Ahmed had illegally pocketed the NBP funds by depositing huge amount of money in their personal bank accounts, it added.

The bureau said accused Muhammad Sarwar Khan Ex-OG-I, remained posted at the AFU Booth NBP Airport Branch, Karachi, from July 2012 to March 2013 and was found involved in illegally making goods declarations’ collection scrolling sheets with the connivance of accused Muhammad Afzal and issued pay orders in favour of the collector customs without having balance in the respective custom accounts.

It maintained that the accused persons with common intention had misused their authority, committed criminal breach of trust, misappropriated funds, deceitfully, fraudulently, dishonestly causing losses to the tune of Rs1,519,211,706 to the national exchequer. Therefore, they committed the offence of corruption and corrupt practices as envisaged under Section 9(a) (iii) (vi) (x) (xi) (xii) of National Accountability Ordinance 1999, punishable, under Section 10 read with Sections 405, 409, 34, and 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).