NAB told to submit inquiry report on ‘illegal’ sale of aviation fuel

The Karachi registry of the Supreme Court has directed the prosecutor of the country’s top anti-graft watchdog to submit a report on the inquiry into an aviation lubricant company’s alleged illegal sale of fuel to private industries.

The order came on Wednesday on a petition of Zeeshan Karimi, chief executive officer of the private aviation lubricant company, requesting that his confiscated passport be returned to him.

Karimi said the Sindh High Court (SHC) had granted him pre-arrest protective bail with a surety in the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) inquiry regarding alleged misuse and illegal sale of aviation fuel, with the order to surrender his passport.

He told the SC that he had to travel abroad for business, and requested that the top court set aside the SHC’s order of surrendering his passport as “unlawful”. NAB’s deputy prosecutor Munsif Jan said the watchdog was investigating into complaints of misuse of aviation fuel that was to be supplied to the defence authorities.

Jan said the complainants claimed that only a minor quantity of fuel was supplied to the defence authorities while most of it was sold to private individuals and industries, causing losses of Rs2.37 billion to the national exchequer.

The court’s three-member bench headed by Justice Mushir Alam directed NAB’s prosecutor to submit the watchdog’s report on the inquiry against the private company’s alleged misuse of aviation fuel.  

Security arrangements

The SC directed the Sindh advocate general to submit a concise statement with regard to the security of lawyers and the courts after meeting with representatives of the legal fraternity.

The court was hearing a petition submitted by the Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA) that sought adequate security for judges, lawyers, their families and the courts.

The SHCBA’s counsel Kashif Paracha said the association’s representatives were not called in by government authorities to devise and implement a plan to improve the existing security of judges, lawyers, their families and the court complexes.

The bench directed the advocate general to convene a meeting with the bar’s representatives to discuss security arrangements for the legal fraternity and the courts, and then submit a compliance report to the SC.