Businessman accuses Anwar Majeed of using ACE to grab his business

A businessman has approached the Sindh High Court (SHC) with a complaint that a front man of Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari is pressurising him with the connivance of the anti-corruption establishment to hand over his foreign tractors’ contract worth billion of rupees.

Filing a contempt of court application in the high court, Shahzad Riaz, a dealer of foreign tractors, submitted that one of his business competitors, Anwar Majeed, who is a front man of the former president of Pakistan, Zardari, and the owner of the Omni Group, was using influence of various government officials, including those from the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE), to hijack his business and obtain a licence agreement with the foreign tractor company.

He further alleged that Majeed got him implicated in a subsidised tractor supply scheme scam though he had been cleared of the allegations by the National Accountability Bureau in an identical inquiry. 

Riaz said the ACE lodged an FIR against him for fraudulent acts in the tractor supply scheme despite NAB’s clearance for him.

He added that he could not be vexed twice over the same offence.  

The petitioner’s counsel said the high court had restrained the anti-corruption establishment from taking any coercive action against his client and directed him to join the investigation. 

He said the petitioner was harassed by the investigation officer during the investigation and he was forced to accede to the demands of Majeed and Khawaja Suleman Younus to withdraw from the tractor dealership contract in favour of them. 

He submitted that the ACE was seizing the record of his offices situated in different districts of the province and pressurising his employees/ dealers to record statements against him.

The counsel alleged that his client was also threatened with confiscation of his Rs900 million tractors if he did not accept the demands. He requested the court to take action against the alleged contemnor and quash the impugned anti-corruption proceedings as they had already been closed down by NAB.

A division bench headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar issued a notice to the alleged contemnor, the ACE officer, and adjourned the hearing till June 5. 

The ACE had booked the petitioner in a case pertaining to a fraud in the subsidized tractor supply scheme in 2011 by filing fake claims of growers, causing losses to the national exchequer worth Rs140.7 million.