The history of this much abused country is being churned to let the scum rise to the top. And what nuggets of filth are floating up -- military-made political parties, midnight jackals, cash for elections, Karachi operations, agency this and agency that. Is this the Pakistani version of a truth and reconciliation commission? The 'truth' being dished out has more slants than a right-angle triangle and it is certainly not leading to any reconciliation. The million-dollar question is where all these worms crawled out of? Have they rolled down the presidency, as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) alleges or have they emerged from the irritable bowel of an over-active nine zero? Whoever has unleashed them has no care for the ascetic discipline of the holy month because they make for a juicy and spicy fare. It is easy to choke on Brigadier Billa because he is truly unsavoury. But let us admit to a secret vice; he has stories to tell. And stories are interesting even if they come from the mouth of someone you would ideally like to see begging for mercy, hanging upside down a pole The question of the month though is -- and it has been asked often enough -- let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I don't see a mad rush for the quarries and the reason is simple. The elite of this country has much to seek forgiveness for. We are all sinners literally and metaphorically. The politicians top the list because they flaunt their sins publicly or maybe we scrutinise them more fearlessly. They are vulnerable because their passion for fame and fortune makes them impatient. It is not a pleasure they want to defer and end up becoming easy targets for manipulators. The Hameed Guls and the Billas of this world thrive in this milieu. They have guns and cash. While the politicians are more visible, their sins in the larger scheme of things are relatively innocent. They make money and are unprincipled but their impact on the nation is more through happenstance than design. The sins of some people in the military have been more sinister, more egregious and more damaging to the nation. It is they who need to be exposed. REFERENCE: How Aslam Beg damaged a nation By Shafqat Mahmood Friday, September 04, 2009 Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com Source: The News International URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=196480
Shahid Nama with Dr Shahid Masood 21st July 2011-1
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN0GYZdnLsw
Wednesday, July 20, 2011, Shaban-ul-Muazzam 17, 1432 A.H
http://ejang.jang.com.pk/pic.asp?npic=07-20-2011/Karachi/images/06_03.gif
http://jang.com.pk/jang/jul2011-daily/20-07-2011/col1.htm
General Mirza Aslam Beg wanted safe exit for Military Dictator General Pervez Musharraf (Courtesy: Daily Dawn) and one of the participant of the above meeting i.e. General (R) Hamid Gul praised General Musharraf Martial Law (Courtesy: BBC)
General Hamid Gul supported Pervez Musharraf on 12 Oct 1999
URL: http://youtu.be/HRXOjCGcoRI
LAHORE, Aug 7: Politicians must start developing a consensus for providing a safe exit to Gen Pervez Musharraf when he will transfer power next year. This was stated by Gen Mirza Aslam Beg (retired), chief of Awami Qiadat Party, while addressing a press conference here on Tuesday. He said the parliament had approved 69 amendments to the Constitution, including Article 58-2(b), and ratified all acts of the martial law regime before President Ziaul Haq transferred power to the government headed by Muhammad Khan Junejo. Gen Musharraf would not be an exception, Mr Beg said. "He needs indemnity laws. An insurance policy before transferring power to civilians. It is up to the politicians to provide him with an escape route if they want a smooth transition," he said. Mr Beg predicted that the next set-up would suffer from inherent problem of pulls and pushes from different sides because not a single party was going to win next elections. This situation puts an added responsibility on politicians to develop some kind of agreement for running the country in the future, Mr Beg said, adding that the absence of such a consensus would make things difficult for the nation. About allegations of armymen meddling with polls to ensure election of "right candidates" and its possible resulting in the division of the army, he said: "The establishment's interference in the elections has always backfired. The same will happen this time. Look at Azhar Saeed Butt's case. He was virtually living with the 114 Brigade but lost elections. I don't think that a wishful thinking of getting "desirable candidate" elected works. Let the army play its hand and see the results for itself." REFERENCE: Provide safe exit to Musharraf: Beg Staff Reporter DAWN WIRE SERVICE Week Ending: 11 August, 2001 Issue : 07/32 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/2001/aug1101.html#prov
In my reading of post-Zia history, there is no greater sinner than Aslam Beg. By his actions after Zia's death and indeed throughout his tenure of office, he caused great harm to this nation. He did not let democracy settle, manipulated parties and politicians and corrupted them, brought governments down, indeed did everything he possibly could to create circumstances for his ascent to power. He failed but in the process, he hurt us badly. It is easy to blame Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) because he had his share of sins but without Aslam Beg goading him on, much of what GIK did would not have happened. It was Beg who asked Hameed Gul to form the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) and stop Benazir and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from coming to power. When he could not stop it, it was he who led the media and dirty-tricks campaign to undermine it and bring it down. Let us keep our biases aside for a minute, ladies and gentlemen. Whether we like Benazir Bhutto is not the issue here and more importantly, let us suspend our knowledge of what she did later. However, in 1988 she was not only the most popular leader in Pakistan but an international celebrity. She was an Aung San Suu Kyi like figure whose father had been murdered and who had suffered much hardship. There was not a hint of the taints that later followed her. If Beg and his cohorts had been patriots, they would not have formed the IJI to stop her. Afterwards when she still made it to power, they would have seen her as an asset to Pakistan. They should have gone to her and said "Madam, you are inexperienced but we will help you run the government. Your international image is a great plus for the country and we want you to repair the damage to our global reputation after Zia's draconian dictatorship." They did nothing of the sort. They started to sully her image and taint her reputation from day one. She indeed had her faults and made their task easier but she should have been guided. Instead, they launched operation midnight jackal, engineered a no-confidence move against her, got the MQM to take on the PPP in the streets of Karachi, thwarted the Pucca Qilla operation, which was leading to the capture of a huge cache arms stored by terrorists in Hyderabad, and then prevailed upon GIK to dismiss her government. This not only hurt Pakistan but derailed democracy. Had a single civilian government completed its tenure and transfer of power taken place through constitutionally scheduled elections, we would have been on our way. But Beg would not allow this. It was not without purpose. His plan was to first destroy the reputation of Benazir, bring her government down, and then do the same to Nawaz Sharif. Once all politicians had been damaged, he thought, his ascent to power would become easy. Consider this. After the Benazir government had been dismissed in 1990, he distributed money and did everything to make an IJI government come into power. Yet no sooner had Nawaz Sharif taken over, he was conspiring against him. I know this personally because I saw it happen before my eyes. Nawaz Sharif had taken over in perhaps October or November and by December, officers of military intelligence were making contact with the PPP to instigate it against the government. REFERENCE: How Aslam Beg damaged a nation By Shafqat Mahmood Friday, September 04, 2009 Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com Source: The News International URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=196480
Shahid Nama with Dr Shahid Masood 21st July 2011-2
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUpKO-5BPQ
General Mirza Aslam Beg was also trained by US Central Intelligence in 1950s (Courtesy: The New York Times)
One afternoon, in the midst of a monsoon, I sought out one of the founders of the pro-jihadi strategy, the retired general Mirza Aslam Beg. He lived in Rawalpindi, the military capital half an hour from Islamabad, in a brick and tile-roofed mansion with a basketball hoop, flowing greenery and Judy, his one-eyed cocker spaniel. The house was immaculate, with marble floors, rugs, fine china and porcelain on display behind glass and an amusing portrait of Aslam Beg as a young, Ray-Banned, pommaded officer. His mansion sits across the street from Musharraf’s. Aslam Beg played a leading role in the military’s creation of “asymmetrical assets,” jargon for the jihadis who have long been used by the military as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan. He was chief of the army staff from 1988 to 1991, while the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was selling the country’s nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Beg held talks with the Iranians about exchanging Iranian oil for Pakistani nuclear skill.
Aslam Beg likes to remind visitors that he was one of a group of army officers trained by the C.I.A. in the 1950’s as a “stay-behind organization” that would melt into the population if ever the Soviet Union overran Pakistan. Those brigadiers and lieutenant colonels then trained and directed the Afghan jihadis.
In the 1980’s, “the C.I.A. set up the largest support and administrative bases in Mohmand agency, Waziristan and Baluchistan,” Aslam Beg told me. “These were the logistics bases for eight long years, and you can imagine the relations that developed. And then Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Saudis developed family relations with the local people.” The Taliban, he said, fell back after 2001 to these baselines. “In 2003, when the U.S. attacked Iraq, a whole new dimension was added to the conflict. The foreign mujahedeen who’d fought in Afghanistan started moving back to Afghanistan and Iraq.” And the old Afghan jihadi leaders stopped by the mansion of their mentor, Aslam Beg, to tell him they were planning to wage war against the American occupiers.
As the rain outside turned to hail, banging against the windows, Aslam Beg ate some English sandwiches that had been wheeled in by a servant. “As a believer,” he went on, “I’ll tell you how I understand it. In the Holy Book there’s an injunction that the believer must reach out to defend the tyrannized. The words of God are, ‘What restrains you from fighting for those helpless men, women and children who due to their weakness are being brutalized and are calling you to free them from atrocities being perpetuated on them.’ This is a direct message, and it may not impact the hearts and minds of all believers. Maybe one in 10,000 will leave their home and go to the conflicts where Muslims are engaged in liberation movements, such as Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now it’s a global deterrent force.”
The Authentic Jihad
The old city of Lahore, with its broad boulevards and banyan-tree canopies, remains the cultural and intellectual heart of Pakistan. It is home to a small elite of journalists, editors, authors, painters, artists and businessmen. Najam Sethi, editor in chief of The Friday Times, and his wife, Jugnu Mohsin, the publisher, are popular fixtures among this crowd. Like so many of Pakistan’s intellectuals, they have had their share of run-ins with government security agents. For pushing the bounds of press freedom, Sethi was dragged from his bedroom during Nawaz Sharif’s reign, beaten, gagged and detained without charge. Musharraf, in his new autobiography, claims that Nawaz Sharif wanted him to court-martial Sethi for treason, an act that seemed ludicrous to him, and he refused.
I met him one afternoon at the newspaper’s offices as he was preparing his weekly editorial. He is a tall, affable man with smiling eyes and large glasses. And he got right down to business, providing an analysis of why Pakistan had decided to bring its “assets” — by which he meant the Taliban and Kashmiri jihadis — off the shelf.
In the days following 9/11, when Musharraf gathered together major editors to tell them that he had no choice but to withdraw his support for the Taliban, Sethi raised the touchy issue of the other jihadis. He said that if Musharraf was abandoning the Taliban, he would have to abandon the sectarian jihadis (fighting the Shiites), the Kashmir jihadis, all of the jihadis, because they were all trained in mind by the same religious leaders and in body by the same Pakistani forces.
In January 2002, Musharraf gave an unusually long televised speech to the nation. He reminded the people that his campaign against extremism was initiated years before and not under American pressure. He vowed that Pakistan would no longer export jihadis to Kashmir, that he was again placing a ban on several jihadi organizations, that camps would be closed and that while the madrasas were mostly educating the poor, some were centers of extremist teaching and would be reformed. A month later, Musharraf was at the White House next to President Bush, who praised him for standing against terrorism. REFERENCE: In the Land of the Taliban By ELIZABETH RUBIN Published: October 22, 2006 A version of this article appeared in print on October 22, 2006, on page 686 of the New York edition. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22afghanistan.html?pagewanted=1
Not only that, Beg deliberately started to undermine Nawaz by taking a position different from that of the government during the First Gulf War. His agents, largely serving military officers but also some of his friends, principally one Lahore-based businessman, started to goad the PPP to take on the Nawaz Sharif government through street power. The purpose was to create enough trouble to make it possible for Beg to take over. Fortunately, for us, his time ran out and Ghulam Ishaq Khan trumped him by appointing a new army chief, two months before his term of office was to end. This was unprecedented and the only reason it was done was to make him a lame duck and thwart his ambition for power. Beg left with much regret but a legacy of bitterness was created that tainted the entire decade of the 90s. Democracy could not settle after that. Benazir and the PPP eventually managed to bring Nawaz Sharif down through Ghulam Ishaq Khan and PML N paid the compliment back by launching various movements during Benazir's second term in office. It then supported Farooq Leghari in the sacking of the second PPP government. This merry-go-round continued until Musharraf threw the whole lot out in 1999. End of democracy phase one. A new phase has started. What will this bring? REFERENCE: How Aslam Beg damaged a nation By Shafqat Mahmood Friday, September 04, 2009 Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com Source: The News International URL: http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=196480
Shahid Nama with Dr Shahid Masood 21st July 2011-3
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8OXtwu5Qbg
Let me give all of you glimpse of Barrister Akram Sheikh [who is nowaday itching for the Supremacy of Judiciary over Parliament, Rule of Law, Constitution and bla bla bla] and one of his most Lethal and Valuable Client i.e. General [R] Mirza Aslam Beg who is involved in a worst kind of Corruption Scandal in Pakistan i.e. Mehran Bank Scandal. Abdul Hafeez Pirzada is also involved in Mehran Bank/ISI Scandal and accepted Bribe and Petition Vide Number (HRC 19/96) is still pending in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. One wonders where the hell is the Suo Moto Notice and Judicial Activism of Judiciary???? Read what General [R] Mirza Aslam Beg had to say about the Judiciary and Barrister Akram Sheikh was representing him.
ISLAMABAD, Feb. 24: Former army chief Gen Aslam Beg told the Supreme Court that he was not answerable to it regarding his actions as the chief of army staff and the sitting COAS is the only competent and proper person to look into the allegations or take action. He made this statement after the issuance of notice by the Supreme Court on the petition of Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan. The former air chief had filed a petition against the former COAS alleging that he had drawn Rs150 million from the Mehran Bank and had distributed the amount to different politicians before the 1990 elections. When the hearing started on Monday, Deputy Attorney-General Mumtaz Ahmed Mirza placed a certificate from the secretary ministry of defence stating that the ISI had not received any money. The counsel for Gen Beg, Mohammad Akram Shaikh, demanded that Gen (retd) Asad Durrani and General (retd) Naseerullah Babar should be summoned to the court for recording their statements. The three-member bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui, Justice Fazal Ellahi Khan and Justice Bashir Jehangiri, adjourned the hearing of the case till March 26. REFERENCE: Beg says he is not answerable to court Staff Correspondent DAWN WIRE SERVICE Week Ending: 01 March 1997 Issue:03/09 http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia/SAserials/Dawn/1997/01Mar97.htmlShahid Nama with Dr Shahid Masood 21st July 2011-4
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9eFU8Oldg
Barrister Akram Sheikh provided his "services" to a Corrupt Ex-Army Chief of Pakistan i.e. General [R] Mirza Aslam Beg who was least bothered about the "Honour and Respect of Judiciary, another glimpse,
Former Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Beg in an interview on February 04, 1993 admitted that he had sent an emissary, then senate chairman Wasim Sajjad to the Supreme Court to warn the justices not to restore the national assembly. Two weeks later, Supreme Court charged General Beg with contempt of court. Beg met with army Chief Abdul Waheed Kakar and later appeared defiantly in the court and many witnesses ridiculed the judges. Supreme Court could not handle the fallout from its confrontation with even a retired army chief. Court finally convicted him of contempt but strangely did not give any judgment about the sentence. The same court even overturned its own decision after an appeal was filed. After a year of half hearted measures, on January 09, 1994 the court dropped all proceedings against general Beg. REFERENCE: Judicial Jitters in Pakistan – A Historical Overview Hamid Hussain Defence Journal, June 2007 http://watandost.blogspot.com/2007/05/judicial-jitters-in-pakistan-scholarly.html"QUOTE"
11 - Sultan Ali Lakhani & family Pakistan Ranking: 9 (tied at 9) Worth: £400m ($800) Industry: Businessman
The Lakhanis are currently having a hard time at the hands of NAB. Sultan Lakhani and his three brothers run this prestigious group and the chain of McDonald’s restaurants in Pakistan. NAB has alleged the Lakhanis of having created phoney companies through worthless directors and raised massive loans from various banks and financial institutions. Sultan is currently abroad after having served a jail term with younger sibling Amin, though the latter was released much earlier. NAB had reportedly demanded Rs 7 billion from Lakhanis, but later agreed they pay only Rs 1.5 billion over a 10-year period. Lakhanis, like their arch-rivals Hashwanis, are the most well-known of all Ismaeli tycoons. Their stakes range from media, tobacco, paper, chemicals and surgical equipment to cotton, packaging, insurance, detergents and other house-hold items, many of which are joint ventures with leading international conglomerates. Though Lakhanis are in turbulent waters currently, the success that greeted them during the last 25 years especially has been tremendous. They have rifts with large business empires despite being known fur their genteel nature. Whether it is any government in Sindh or at the Federal level, Lakhanis have had trusted friends everywhere, though the present era has proved a painful exception. REFERENCE: Pakistans Rich List of 2008 Posted by Teeth MaestroDecember 8, 2007 http://teeth.com.pk/blog/2007/12/08/pakistans-rich-list-of-2008 HOUSE OF GRAFT: Tracing the Bhutto Millions -- A special report.; Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption By JOHN F. BURNS Published: January 09, 1998 http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/09/world/house-graft-tracing-bhutto-millions-special-report-bhutto-clan-leaves-trail.html?pagewanted=all
NAB in tight corner as businessmen refuse to pay dues By Kamran Khan - Two important business families of the provincial metropolis who had earlier agreed to pay about Rs1.8 billion to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and various banks - an offer that won them an immunity against allegations of financial impropriety and release of their key directors from prisons - have reneged on their promises. The defiant businessmen, senior NAB officials concede, currently constitute the single most important challenge to their drive against white-collar crime in the country. Senior NAB officials have confirmed that Sultanally Lakhani and his three brothers, who partly run and operate the Lackson Group of Companies, and the Mcdonald’s food restaurants in Pakistan, after two initial payments of Rs100 million each, have stopped further payments for an agreed amount of Rs1.5 billion. The NAB had alleged that the Lakhani brothers created phoney companies through worthless directors and raised massive loans from various banks and financial institution. Similarly, Irfan Iqbal Puri, Karachi’s leading supplier of petroleum products from the Gulf countries, has refused to match the agreed amount of Rs300 million after an initial payment of Rs230 million to the NAB. Puri, the NAB had alleged, compromised the quality and quantity of petroleum products in supplies to the Pakistan State Oil and caused huge financial loss to the national exchequer. Sultanally Lakhani, who was jailed for about nine months, and Irfan Puri, who had spent almost an equal amount of time in the NAB and jail custody, have since left the country and have taken up residence in the United States and the United Kingdom. Their attorneys have challenged the signed deals with the NAB claiming that the deals were signed under duress. Circles close to both the persons said that if the "businessmen are harassed in this country you can not stop negative impacts". "We are initiating fresh probe and action against the Lakhanis and Irfan Puri," said a senior NAB official. "The NAB will make sure that they stand by their agreements. We can’t allow people to hoodwink the NAB." A present official of the NAB said that in the past the Bureau had brought historical achievements and brought back large amount of looted money. A big and highly reputed entrepreneur, who knows much about Lakhani’s case, while talking to The News categorically said that it was sheer injustice to those businessman who were law-abiding and doing their business honestly and making some achievements by working hard day and night. He said that a businessman obtained loans of billions of rupees, invested it in his business by some other name, earned a lot of profit, multiplied his wealth, brought new products in the market but declined to return the loan, and when he was caught he was given ten years more to pay back the loan in instalments. What are the laws of this country that when this person again defaulted no one is making it point that till the time he was caught, how much he had expanded his business and how many products he had introduced using these loans, he said. He said that it would not be surprising that he would again be given the facility of repayment in instalments for further many years and these episodes would go on. When asked about remedy, he said that it would be fair that the amount due on such defaulters be secured by confiscating their business units of equivalent value plus interest and selling these in the market. He added that it was injustice with other businessmen and the country to give any concession to such habitual defaulters who were continuously expanding their business and bringing new products in the market and not paying back heavy loans by bringing up the plea that they were in loss in the company for which the loan was taken. "It’s a fraud with the nation," he said.On the other hand, various legal experts are wondering if the NAB had foolproof cases against the accused businessmen, why did the NAB top brass left big legal holes in their deals with the businessmen who somehow managed that the NAB make no official mention of the specific charges against them and the entire evidence collected in the course of investigation be "dismembered". Sultan Lakhani and his brother Amin Lakhani, who is also Honorary Consul-General of Singapore, were arrested on May 8, 2000 by the NAB wing of the ISI. Amin was released after a few days, but Sultan spent another nine months in various NAB detention centres and Adyala prison before his lawyer and the present Attorney-General of Pakistan, Makhdoom Ali Khan, reached an agreement with the then NAB chairman. NAB officials privately concede that in case of Sultanally Lakhani and other key directors of the Lackson Group of Companies, the then NAB leadership had not applied the legally tenable practise of plea bargain and instead had decided to supervise a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Lakhani brothers and various financial institutions. They further said they were looking that how such a deal had been made. Was there a helping hand or was it done innocently?
Sliding down from its initial demand of Rs7 billion, the NAB agreed with Makhdom Ali Khan advocate of the Lakhani brothers that they pay an amount of Rs1.5 billion to the lenders in 10 years. The NAB agreed that in the MOU that the Lakhani brothers would not accept any guilt in the document and instead the MOU would reflect them as buyers of assets of nine companies in exchange for the payment of liabilities. The NAB had found, in its investigation, that all these companies were actually front for the Lakhani brothers, who consistently denied the charge. Furthermore, the NAB agreed to withdraw its reference against Sultan Lakhani and various co-accused, including the senior executives of the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan who had extended the loans without proper securities and background checks. The NAB investigators were also asked to stop probe against nine other companies of the same group. The investigators were also told to return the collected evidence to the respective financial institutions. The accused persons who benefited from the NAB deal included Sultan Ali Lakhani, Iqbal Ali Lakhani, Zulfiqar Ali Lakhani, Amin Muhammad Lakhani, Sahibzada Naushad Ahmed, M Muneer Adenwalla, Hassan Ali Merchant, Tasleemuddin Batlay, Aziz Ebrahim (Lakson Group), Anjum Naveed (General Manager M/s Project Development Services), Muhammad Sirajul Hassan (former chief officer at Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan’s regional office in Karachi), Khalid Mehmood Nagra, Syed Mehboob Hussain (office in-charge of the IDBP) and Rehan A Siddiqi (Manager Documentation Department of IDBP, Karachi. NAB officials said that after much pressing the Lakhani brothers had only paid Rs200 million and were now clearly avoiding the payment of remaining Rs1.3 billion. Irfan Iqbal Puri, who used to be a key middleman between the country’s top buyers of petroleum products and the Middle Eastern suppliers, made the single largest payment of Rs235 million to the NAB following his three-month-long interrogation by the NAB investigators, who apparently confronted him with the evidence allegedly showing kickbacks and commissions received from the Middle Eastern suppliers, who allegedly compromised quality and quantity of petroleum products sold to Pakistan.
At the time of his release Puri, NAB officials said, pledged to pay a total sum of Rs300 million, but subsequently he refused to make the final instalment of Rs65 million and instead confronted the NAB with a lawsuit claiming the return of Rs235 million that he had already paid to the NAB. In Puri’s case the NAB downplayed its agreement with him to an extent that no official announcement was made about the plea bargain deal. At the same time, the NAB withheld its evidence and findings against Puri from any public and legal scrutiny, a measure that has now become the strongest argument in the Puri’s case against the NAB. NAB officials said that the plea bargain deals are meant to recover the looted money in exchange for some grace to the accused persons who get the benefit of not going through the public trial and exposure of their misdeeds in public.
But the process is attracting some criticism, as it allows the senior NAB officials to exercise their discretion in settling the amount for the plea bargain. In Irfan Puri, Usman farooqi and Admiral Mansurul Haq cases the money recovered by the NAB may match their ill-gotten wealth, but in some cases some key suspects won their freedom at a cheap cost. For instance Huzoor Buksh Khalwar, a former Karachi Metropolitan director, who was arrested after a NAB investigation found that he had allegedly amassed wealth to the tune of hundreds of millions of rupees, was set free after a brief (according to the NAB standards) three months’ confinement and a nominal payment of Rs16 million. Khalwar was one of the beneficiaries of a Rs600 million octroi fraud unearthed in the KMC in 1998. NAB officials privately acknowledged that the plea bargain deal with Khalwar could not be counted as one the best deals the NAB has struck with the country’s most corrupt bureaucrats. REFERENCE: NAB in tight corner as businessmen refuse to pay dues By Kamran Khan http://www.fact.com.pk/archives/may/feng/nab.htm HOUSE OF GRAFT: Tracing the Bhutto Millions -- A special report.; Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption By JOHN F. BURNS Published: January 09, 1998 http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/09/world/house-graft-tracing-bhutto-millions-special-report-bhutto-clan-leaves-trail.html?pagewanted=all
KARACHI: While the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) made an official confirmation to the Lakhani family in Karachi about the arrest of Sultan Ali Lakhani on a wide range of criminal charges Tuesday evening, official word was still awaited until Tuesday night about the whereabouts of Sultan’s younger brother, Amin Lakhani. Leading businessman Amin Lakhani also runs the Karachi operation of the fast food chain, McDonald’s. Beside running the McDonald’s franchise in Karachi, the Lakhani brothers run Lakson Tobacco Company, a textile unit, an internet company called the Cybernet and Century Publications. Sources informed the News Intelligence Unit (NIU) that the Lakhnis are now being questioned on alleged charges that include: questionable loans worth hundreds of crores of rupees for setting up granite and marble processing plants; bank default; evasion of excise duty; concealment of foreign property; links with the smuggling of 11 containers case; causing huge revenue losses to PTCL through illegal termination of long distance calls and financial dealings with Mr. Hakim Ali Zardari. REFERENCES : Lakhani brothers in NAB hands http://www.karachipage.com/news/May_00/051000.html HOUSE OF GRAFT: Tracing the Bhutto Millions -- A special report.; Bhutto Clan Leaves Trail of Corruption By JOHN F. BURNS Published: January 09, 1998 http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/09/world/house-graft-tracing-bhutto-millions-special-report-bhutto-clan-leaves-trail.html?pagewanted=all
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