KARACHI - An accountability court in Karachi on Saturday convicted former chairman of National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) Ayaz Khan Niazi and five others in a mega corruption case.
Earlier, the court had reserved the judgment after hearing final arguments from both sides, and testified the witnesses and evidence. The court sentenced to seven years in prison the main suspect Ayaz Khan Niazi and others including Amin Qasim Dada, Hur Rihai Gardezi, Amir Hussain, Zahid Hussain and Mohammad Zahoor for their involvement in the mega corruption scandal.
The court also declared the convicts illegible for holding any public office for 10 years.
According to the judgment announced in an open court, the convicts were found involved in embezzling NICL funds to buy 10 acres of land in Karachi’s Korangi area. All the convicts had caused a loss of more than Rs400 million to the national treasury.
Apart from embezzling NICL funds to buy land in Korangi, Niazi is also named in four other corruption cases that are currently being heard in accountability courts in Lahore.
The NICL corruption scandal revolves around the alleged misuse of authority for Niazi’s appointment, hampering the investigation process regarding his appointment, and corruption committed by the accused along with others, including Mohsin Habib Warraich.
The scandal of the Rs6 billion-plus NICL scam came to surface in 2009-10 when Mohsin Warraich’s company, Messrs Privilege, purchased 803 kanals land from the NICL at Mauza Toor, Lahore, for a sum of Rs1.68b. The company allegedly sold the land without getting the property mutated in its favour.
The NICL also sold land measuring 20 kanals near the Lahore Airport Road to Mohsin Warraich for Rs1.7b. It sold the land at a rate of Rs5.3 million per kanal, although its market value was much higher.
Initially the scam was being investigated by the Federal Investigation Agency, but was transferred to NAB in 2014 on the directives of the Supreme Court.
On May 13, the Supreme Court had ordered the NAB to arrest the main suspect Ayaz Niazi in an effort to clear the backlog of pending SC cases. The apex court took up a 2010 suo motu notice on the NICL corruption scandal taken by the then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Karachi and Lahore accountability courts have been ordered by the SC to wrap up the case within two months.