LAHORE - FIA Punjab Lahore has sought permission from its headquarter to interrogate some senior PIA officers allegedly involved in corruption case, well placed sources in the agency confided to The Nation on Monday.

It is worth mentioning here that FIA has started an inquiry into the wet lease of an aircraft A-330 on exorbitant rates. The above said inquiry was started on special directions of Interior Minister, Ch Nisar Ali Khan.

FIA Punjab has sent a written request to its Director General seeking permission to include three senior PIA officers among those to be interrogated.

An FIA officer seeking anonymity said that three senior officer included Director Flight Operation, Director Engineering and Chief Financial Officers who could be summoned by FIA for questioning.

Sources in FIA further revealed that FIA team demanded correspondence of these above said officers made with the Sri Lankan authorities regarding lease issue through emails. But they have deleted their email record from server and no text was available to read though contact record was there.

FIA officer said that it is another crime to delete official record from server. A three-member team of FIA investigators also visited Karachi to probe alleged corruption in PIA leased aircrafts but as per FIA investigators, PIA officers did not cooperate with them and provided only partial record in question.

The team members not only collected relevant record but also recorded statements of some senior officers of the national carrier allegedly involved in the illegal lease of A-330 aircraft.

As per preliminary inquiry, PIA management leased the above mentioned aircraft on inflated rates as compared to other private airlines of the country.

Sources in FIA said investigators had sought record from PIA and Shaheen Airlines, but the national carrier management was reluctant to provide relevant record of the leased aircraft.

A-330 aircraft from Sri Lankan Airlines leased at astronomically high rate is shocking, an FIA investigator said that Sri Lankan Airlines wanted to downsize their fleet because their accumulated loss had reached $993 million, while PIA losses had risen to over Rs 300 billion by the 3rd quarter of 2016 as per briefing given to the Senate Committee with over Rs 5 billion losses every month. It has become a controversial practice in PIA that they lease aircraft of the same type at 60 to 100 per cent higher rates than that leased by other private airlines of Pakistan.

If PIA had ascertained reasons why Sri Lankan Airlines was desperate to lease A330 aircraft to a customer, they would have found out that huge losses forced them to do so.

When PIA spokesman Danyal Gillani was contacted to know his view point over the issue, his cell phone remained off despite repeated efforts.