A big loot

This refers to the news report, ‘Balochistan finance secretary remanded to 14-day police custody’ (May 7). The report states, “The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday raided the residence of Mushtaq Raisani and recovered bags of local and foreign currency, prize bonds and gold jewellery valued at around Rs630 million.”

Rs630 million is the amount recovered. There must be hundreds of millions that the finance secretary must have spent or distributed to others to keep them quiet. One wonders what kind of auditing procedures are in place. How is it possible that an amount this big has been stolen without any questions being asked? One is astounded that when the poor of Balochistan have been facing inadequate funding for health, education and security, here you have a senior bureaucrat who is siphoning off millions. Gen Raheel Sharif has rightly said that terrorism cannot be eliminated until corruption is ended.

Syed Hussein El-Edroos

Islamabad