An ex-Army officer accused the retired four-star general and top members of a logistical organisation of operating an illegal crude oil business that cost the national exchequer Rs 20 million per day, prompting Pakistan’s anti-corruption body, the NAB, to launch legal action against them.
An ex-Army officer accused the retired four-star general and top members of a logistical organisation of operating an illegal crude oil business that cost the national exchequer Rs 20 million per day, prompting Pakistan’s anti-corruption body, the NAB, to launch legal action against them.
17 people, including two lieutenant colonels, three majors, six soldiers of various ranks, and four civilians, were among those found guilty of oil theft and dismissed by the military authorities on January 26, 2005 for operating a “illegal crude oil business,” according to documents attached with the petition.
In a 2015 plea to the Lahore High Court (LHC), ex-major Akram Raza claimed that numerous military commanders had been demoted for running an illegal crude oil company that was costing the government Rs 20 million per day. Raza filed a not guilty plea and claimed that he was not one of the people fired but rather the person who had attracted attention to the “theft and illicit sale” of crude oil and had been detained and arrested without justification.
According to his plea, the National Logistics Cell (NLC) administration kept urging him to “cooperate with the crude oil mafia and on refusal was threatened (with) terrible consequences” despite the fact that he had a FIR recorded against those responsible for the scam.
He then went up to the head of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). A bench of the LHC made up of Justices Shahid Mehmood Abbasi and Tariq Abbasi instructed the NAB to handle the case in accordance with the law during the hearing on his plea on September 25, 2019.
The approach of ‘High Court’ in Crude oil case
The Islamabad High Court ordered the anti-graft watchdog to dispel the notion that it is only targeting politicians when it heard a contempt of court complaint against the NAB for failing to take action against former Army dictator Gen. (retd) Pervez Musharraf in connection with a complaint about his alleged corruption.
The ex-major said in his complaint that he had been second-in-command of the NLC’s Transport Battalion in Karachi from December 2001 to January 2004 and had thereafter been held in various agencies’ custody till February 27, 2006.
He claimed that after informing the NLC’s then-director general, Major General Khalid Zaheer Akhtar, about the “crude oil mafia” and significant theft in the procurement of 100 Hino buses, he was arrested and incarcerated.
Gen. Akhtar was one of the three NLC general commanders who were found guilty of taking part in the NLC fraud. Hayat, the corps commander of Karachi at the time, reportedly took up the issue but to no avail. The ex-major claimed that Gen Hayat, who is now the vice chief of army staff, sanctioned his termination from the service and levied a fine of Rs 293,000 against him.
According to Dawn, the ex-Major asked the NAB chairman to take action against Gen. Hayat and other NLC officers who had cost the national exchequer billions of rupees in losses.Â
