SHC orders freezing Fazaia Housing Scheme’s bank accounts

The Sindh High Court on Thursday ordered freezing the bank accounts of Fazaia Housing Scheme till further orders. The interim order came on a lawsuit filed by affected people of the housing scheme against the builders and for the recovery of their amounts.

The plaintiffs submitted that they were allotees of the housing scheme and they were not being given possession of the land despite the payment of installments worth million of rupees. The counsel for the plaintiffs produced details of booking and installment of challans.

They sought an injunction and the formation of a mechanism in order to ensure that public at large may not be cheated or defrauded in relation of their respective housing units in the scheme.

The court was informed that the National Accountability Bureau had filed a reference against the builders of the project and seized their accounts. The high court directed the federal government and the private builder to file comments on the lawsuit, and ordered the freezing of accounts in the name of Fazaia Housing Scheme mentioned in the lawsuit till March 19.

In January this year, the SHC had directed the NAB to file the documents that are relevant to their inquiry and mentioning the grounds for the arrest of two partners of a construction company involved in the Rs18 billion Fazaia Housing Scheme (FHS) scam.

The high court’s order came on petitioner Musarrat Nazir’s application filed against the allegedly illegal arrest of the FHS directors by the anti-graft watchdog. The petitioner’s counsel said the SHC had restrained NAB from taking any coercive action against FHS directors Tanvir Ahmed and Bilal Tanvir, but despite a restraining order of the court, the watchdog had arrested the two men and obtained their remand from an accountability court despite their inquiry being in the initial stages.

He said the arrest of the two directors by NAB was unlawful, requesting the court to order their immediate release. The watchdog had earlier informed the SHC that the arrest of the two men had been made under the NAB Ordinance, and no orders of the high court had been violated in this regard.

A division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha had then observed that the matter pertained to the interpretation of the legal issue as to whether the line “no coercive action shall be taken against the petitioners” also prohibits the arrest of someone or not. The court directed the counsel and the deputy attorney general to address the court on the issue.

The had court also directed NAB’s investigating officer and the special prosecutor to submit in the next hearing all the documents relating to the FHS inquiry and the arrest warrants, mentioning the grounds of arrest of the petitioners and the date when the inquiry was opened.

NAB’s special prosecutor had earlier submitted that the watchdog was conducting an inquiry into the FHS on allegations of cheating the public, and that the remand of the detainees was obtained from an accountability court.

The bureau had stated in their comments that their inquiry had revealed that the FHS had been illegally launched by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in partnership with Maxim Properties in 2015 on an illegally consolidated or adjusted land in Deh Allah Phihai located in District Malir’s Taluka Shah Mureed.

The NAB prosecutor said that in accordance with an agreement with the PAF, the construction company sold various units of the scheme to the public and collected billions of rupees in the name of booking, allotment and development of housing units of the said scheme.

However, added the prosecutor, since 2015 the management of the FHS has neither handed over the plots to the allotees nor carried out any significant development work, so the public stand cheated out of their money.

He said that the construction company’s directors — Tanvir Ahmed and his son Bilal Tanvir — were also signatories to the agreement with PAF officials regarding the launching of the FHS and involved in the sale of its units to the public, claiming that the petitioners in connivance with the co-accused had collected Rs18 billion from 6,000 people affected by the fraudulent scheme