Eight officials held for graft in Lahore

LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Lahore, on Monday arrested eight Public Works Department’s (PWD) officials from different areas of city on the charges of making a loss of millions of rupees to the national exchequer through corrupt practices.

According to a NAB spokesman, SDO Khursheed Ahmed, XEN Humera Khurram, Sub-Engineer Naimat Ali, Sub-Engineer Abdul Razzaq, Sarwar Bhatti, Muhammad Ishfaq, Muhammad Amin and Syed Shafqat Hussain in connivance with each other managed to cash bogus bills/payments fraudulently of 19 development projects regarding construction of roads, soiling, drainage, etc, in Sheikhupura which were already executed by the TMA, Sheikhupura.

The spokesman said the Bureau received a complaint against the PWD officials for misappropriating huge government funds, whereas massive embezzlement was unearthed while complaint verification was under way.

Subsequently, he added, NAB Lahore authorised an inquiry and collected all the records available with PWD.The spokesman maintained that during the course of inquiry and as per available record, it was disclosed that all projects belong to three constituencies i.e. NA-134, PP-166 and PP-169. He also claimed that most of the accused persons didn’t join the inquiry proceedings with NAB even after several notices were sent to them.

The Lahore NAB after receiving warrants arrested all the accused persons and they would be produced before Accountability Court today  for seeking their physical remand.