The watchdog had been relatively quite these past few days with no big name findings regarding the ex-ruling party’s politicians, because , lets face it, it was made to identify everything wrong with PML-N only. And it has done a great job at that. This time, under scrutiny is Khaqan Abbassi’s son in an LNG scam.
It has released its first report regarding the scam, exclusively received by The News:
The major flow of Rs1.2 billion showed in three accounts of Abdullah Abbasi in the past five years. Five accounts of [dummy] companies, Travel Routers (owned by Abdullah Abbasi/Saud Abbasi), Blue Water (owned by Abdullah Abbasi/Momin Ali Khan) and Pewar Builders (owned by Abdullah Abbasi) are also being analysed where Rs242 million were traced out while NAB report claimed that Abdullah Abbasi has had no independent source of income, Out of total debit of Rs1.6 billion, a voluminous sum of Rs1.1 billion was withdrawn by Abdullah Abbasi between 2015 to 2019
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, his wife Sameena Shahid, his son Abdullah Abbasi, his brother-in-law Dr Jehanzaib Qureshi, his sister Saadia Abbasi and Abid Riaz received total credit/debit of Rs1.53 billion from Feb 2015 to Nov 2019. Total credit of Rs22.3 million was found in Shahid Khaqan’s account 0010040799270012 in ABL branch Islamabad
All of these allegations in the report have been instantly denied by Abdullah Abbassi claiming:
Neither did I do any illegal business nor did I own any undeclared companies. Blue Waters and Travel Routers are declared in my tax returns with FBR, while the majority of the amount came from my father’s accounts as a gift
The report, continued :
A reasonable gap between demand and supply of gas existed in 2012/13 but no mechanism was adopted by the accused Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to quantify the same on tangible data. During the course of the investigation, I could not find single tangible evidence within the Petroleum Division or SSGCL or SNGPL except to a figure of 2 BCF or 4 BCF in draft summaries of the defunct MP and NR. No study was undertaken by the defunct Ministry of Petroleum regarding the gap in demand and supply of gas in various sectors. Allocations were made on surmises without any scrutiny of applications, supported with a firm back to back agreements on the downstream side before import of LNG/RLNG. An estimated requirement of 1200MMCFD was shown in papers only. On such basis flimsy requisitions, 691 allocations of gas were made by ex-premier Abbasi without tangible verification of the requisitions.
