ISLAMABAD/lAHORE – In what may be termed a pre-alliance sweetener to lure the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leadership into a half-cooked power-sharing deal, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government removed Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Additional Director General Zafar Ahmed Qureshi from heading the team investigating the National Insurance Company Limited (NICL) scam, a case in which the PML-Q’s Moonis Elahi is a suspect currently in FIA custody.
Ever since Elahi’s arrest, the PML-Q leadership has been demanding the government to remove Qureshi from the NICL scam probe, accusing the FIA official of partiality and bias against it. The PML-Q leadership also filed an application in the Supreme Court more than once for Qureshi’s removal from the case but to no avail. A FIA source said Qureshi, who was investigating the scam, had been taken off the case and FIA Director General Malik Muhmmad Iqbal would head the investigation himself.
Qureshi, said the source, was known for his honest nature but the government removed him because of political pressure. A source in the government confirmed that Qureshi’s removal was one of the major demands of the Chaudhrys to step into a power-sharing deal with the PPP-led coalition government. “In previous weeks, the angry Chaudhrys even started accusing Interior Minister Rehman Malik of using FIA as an arm-twisting tool against the PML-Q leadership, but they were assured by the PPP’s top command that the government had no role of any nature in implicating Moonis in the NICL scam and it was the Supreme Court’s suo motu notice that had landed the Chaudhrys in trouble,” said the source. Qureshi also told Pakistan Today that he had been taken off the case, but said he had not received a formal notification yet, though well-placed sources said a notification had been issued by Iqbal.
