ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has initiated preliminary inquiry against the officials allegedly involved in Pakistan Post and Habib Bank Limited (HBL) strategic alliance scam of Rs. 118 billion.
HBL and the Pakistan Post Office Department (PPOD) in June 2020 had entered into a 20-year strategic alliance to digitalize Pakistan Post.
Under this agreement, HBL was committed to provide investments in the form of technology, infrastructure and capacity enhancement to the Pakistan Post with the objective of enabling, technology-based and regulatory compliant digital, financial services in far-flung areas of Pakistan and to help propel Pakistan Post into a modern logistics company in the long run.
Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) had written a letter to the NAB after the Pakistan Post reportedly awarded the mega contract to Habib Bank Limited, allegedly in violation of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.
The letter said, “HBL will assist to distribute pension of the federal government by the Pakistan Post Office Department through HBL Konnect, the bank’s branchless banking platform which is about Rs 465 billion annually. If ten days pension circulates through HBL, at a 6 percent profit rate, it will get an annual income to HBL of about Rs116 million which will be about Rs2 billion in 20 years contract period.”
The evaluation report required under Rule 35 and contract document under Rule No-47 were also not posted on the PPRA website, TIP believed.
A senior official of NAB, on condition not to be named, told The News Today that the Bureau has initiated preliminary inquiry against the officials directly associated with strategic alliance of investment portfolio Rs. 118 billion between private financial institution, HBL and the PPOD.
The sources revealed that NAB officials have contacted Pakistan Post Officials including director general Pakistan Post, Ikhlaque Ahmed Rana; Additional Director General dealing with financial services, Ejaz Minhas; former Deputy Director General (DDG) Special Initiatives, Khawaja Imran Raza; incumbent DDG-SI Khalid Javaid and other HBL official dealing with this controversial strategic alliance.
One of the senior officials of Pakistan Post directly dealing with HBL-PPOD strategic alliance, speaking with this scribe, admitted that NAB officials had contacted him to inquire about basic information about the private-public partnership.
NAB Headquarter has also taken up the three-member fact-finding committee’s report to investigate the matter of record tampering and changes in the agreement clauses including clause 2.2 and 5.1, according to the sources.
Director General Pakistan Post had formed a three-member fact-finding committee to investigate the matter of alleged record tampering and changes in the agreement clauses. The fact-finding committee in its report submitted to the federal secretary Ministry of Communication office held Additional Director General (ADG) dealing with financial services in PPOD, responsible for this breach of trust (criminal act) besides some other officials.
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