Four kilos of gold that Masoom Shah unsuccessfully tried to hide

PESHAWAR: There has been lot of curiosity about the almost four kilos of gold that Syed Masoom Shah, an aide to former Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, had kept hidden before it was found and seized by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa branch of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Syed Masoom Shah, or SMS as his name is uniquely abbreviated, is presently in the custody of NAB on charges of corruption and misuse of power. He entered into plea bargain with NAB in December 2015, but an accountability court rejected the deal and raised question whether the amount he was willing to return was acquired through legal or illegal means. The NAB had earlier accepted his offer to pay Rs258.75 million in return for his acquittal and release.

The 39 gold bars of 10 tolas each have been kept in a white briefcase that was sealed and signed by a five-member committee of NAB on August 23, 2015. The NAB officials have made elaborate efforts to secure the precious gold bars weighing 390 tolas and valued at about Rs20 million. The briefcase is kept in a sturdy locker placed in the office of a senior NAB official. Its keys are locked away in another locker. In turn, the keys of the second locker are kept in a secret place somewhere else. The NAB authorities are now planning to shift the gold to its “malkhana” (warehouse) located on an upper floor of its building in Hayatabad, Peshawar.

The story how the gold was recovered seems right out of the movies. The NAB officials said the gold was kept in a locker of a bank in Islamabad in the name of Masoom Shah’s sister. The CCTV footage at the bank helped in identifying Masoom Shah walking out of the bank with a briefcase. By interrogating Masoom Shah, the briefcase was located and found in a house in a faraway village. He reportedly revealed the code numbers for opening the briefcase stuffed with the gold bars after making a request that in return he should be set free. It was kind of a sting operation as the NAB officials were able to get hold of the gold bars obviously without releasing Masoom Shah, who was too precious a catch to be let free.

A goldsmith was later asked to come to the NAB regional office in Peshawar to judge the quality and value of the gold bars. He declared that the gold was pure. It was duly confiscated by NAB after making its video and its value added to the ill-gotten assets that Masoom Shah had allegedly acquired while serving as special assistant to the chief minister in the ANP-led coalition government from 2008-2013.

According to NAB officials, Masoom Shah had initially offered to voluntarily return Rs20 million and later raised the amount to Rs40 million.

However, NAB rejected his offer and gradually got him to admit that he possessed a lot more assets than he had conceded. Eventually, he accepted NAB’s demand to return Rs258.75 million by entering into a plea bargain. He has already deposited more than Rs60 million to NAB and has promised to return the remaining amount in equal installments within six months.