Transparency official to sit in PM Secretariat

ISLAMABAD: Transparency International, which is a watchdog organisation to pinpoint corruption, has been appointed as Consultant by the Nawaz Sharif government for the PM Inspection Commission and its main figure Syed Adil Gilani will now sit in the PM Secretariat.
Documents reveal that a notification was issued on Jan 27 (No.1/1/2015-CH/PMIC), saying Syed Adil Gilani has been appointed as Honorary Consultant and the terms and conditions of his job, besides other tasks, will be as follows:
-To assist chairman PMIC to develop intelligence network to detect corporate crimes
-Check illegal assets/benami transactions
-Monitor mega land, financial, corporate crimes under investigation and in courts under prosecution
-Collect financial crimes data and develop an e-database
-Improve international rating of Pakistan in the Corruption Index
-Check frauds in energy, power and privatisation sector and follow-up.
A PMIC ‘most immediate’ letter dated Jan 3, 2015 written to Transparency International Pakistan stated that PMIC had asked PM Nawaz Sharif to appoint a consultant and he had approved the proposal.
TIP was asked to provide names of such consultants and Syed Adil Gilani was named for the job.
The PMIC letter made an interesting case for the appointment by stating: “The proposed assignment requires specific skills, experience, information network, international cooperation and capacity to discover mega land, financial and corporate crimes. As such this expertise is not available in the market so it is requested that TIP may recommend a panel of consultants.”
When contacted Syed Adil Gilani confirmed that he had accepted the job for two years on an honorary basis but under the contract he will get an official car with driver, tickets to fly between Islamabad and Karachi twice a month, other allowances and an official with staff in the PM Secretariat.
When asked whether his job as a watchdog organisation will be compromised, Mr Gilani said TIP would continue to do its job as in the past without any fear or favour.“TIP will never become part of the Executive and will never be involved in decision-making. TIP acts as adviser, observers and will not have any role in decision making,” he said.
An expert said the agenda given by PMIC to the new consultant was very ambitious and it would be a real test of the international organisation to check such big crimes, while sitting in the PM Secretariat.“If the new system is not allowed to work by the political leaders or government it will bring further bad name to the government,” the expert added.