NAB puts 19 top men on ECL

On the Supreme Court’s direction given in the rental power plants (RPPs) mega corruption case, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Monday put the names of 19 top men, including former federal ministers, federal secretaries and other key officials, on the exit-control list (ECL).
NAB also cautioned 12 RPPs against transferring their properties and directed all district coordination officers (DCOs) and deputy commissioners (DCs) to take appropriate action against transfer of such properties. Those whose names have been put on the ECL are: former federal ministers Raja Pervez Ashraf (Water and Power), Liaquat Jatoi (Water and Power) and Shaukat Tareen (Finance), former federal secretaries Shahid Rafi (Water and Power), Ismail Qureshi (Water and Power), Ishfaq Mahmood (Water and Power) and Salman Siddique (Finance), former NEPRA chairmen Khalid Saeed and Saeed Zafar, GENCO CEO Yousaf Ali, PPIB MD Khalid Irfan Rehman, PEPCO CEOs Saleem Arif and Fazal Ahmad Khan besides Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar and Munawar Baseer Ahmad.
The 12 RPPs, which face action are: Techno E-Power (Faisalabad and Sialkot), Young Generation, Pakistan Power Resource, Kashmore, Piran Ghaib, Reshma Power, Walter Power International, Naudero I and II, M/S Alstove, Bhiki and General electric. Declaring all RPPs’ contracts illegal and non-transparent, the Supreme Court had directed NAB on Friday to proceed against all those involved in corruption. The court had also directed NAB to submit fortnightly progress reports pertaining to actions against the persons involved in corruption in the case to the Registrar Office for the judges’ perusal.
A two-member Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain had announced the verdict holding that the RPPs mode of electricity generation proved a total failure and was incapable of filling the electricity demand and supply gap on a short-term basis.
The judgement said during the award of RPPs’ contracts, PPRA Rules were violated and principle of transparency and open competition was not followed. The court ordered that the contracts of RPPs be rescinded forthwith and all those responsible for it were liable to be dealt with for civil and criminal action in accordance with the law. The court had reserved its judgement on December 14, 2011 on the petitions of federal Minister for Housing Faisal Saleh Hayat and PML-N leader Khawaja Asif in the RPP case. During adjudication of the case, in pursuance of the court orders from time to time, a sum of Rs 8.689 billion was paid back to the government by different RPPs. This amount was paid to them as mobilisation advance, however, proceeding for recovery of interest amounting to Rs 445.496 million from two RPPs Young Gen and Reshma were still pending.
While issuing directives to NAB, the chief justice had said all government functionaries, including the ministers for water and power holding charge in 2006 and onward and from 2008 onward, during whose tenure the RPPs were approved and the finance secretary holding the charge when mobilization advance rate was increased from 7 to 14 percent, were liable to be dealt with under NAB Ordinance 1999.
It was categorically said in the judegment that despite down payment of billions of rupees to the RPPs, Karkey was generating 48.33MW against a capacity of 231MW and Naudero-I was generating 9.16MW against a capacity of 51MW; whereas, Gulf was generating 50.08MW against a capacity of 62 MW. It added that Pakistan Power Resources (Piranghaib, Multan) did not generate electricity at all, although down payment of $14.58 million was made to it, which had not been returned. The judgment said though RPP Reshma has returned the down payment, it is still functioning and generating 15MW only against capacity of 201.3 MW.
The verdict disclosed that per unit cost of electricity produced by the RPPs was on a very high side, as Karkey was ranging from Rs 35 to Rs 50, Gulf Rs 18 to Rs 19, Naudero-I Rs 12 to Rs 19, adding that such rates were a blunt violation of ECC decision of September 10, 2008 which emphasized on making efforts for lower tariff through RPPs than IPPs on the similar technology for the first ten years. All the RPPs are collectively generating just 120MW of electricity. Prior to the introduction of RPPs, the system of generation of electricity under the control and management of Ministry of Water & Power, WAPDA, PEPCO, GENCOs had sufficient potential to produce more electricity, but instead of taking curative steps for its improvement, including clearance of circular debt of the IPPs or resorting to other means of generation of electricity, billions of rupees were spent on Bhikki and Sharqpur RPPs, which proved a complete failure because the object could not be achieved as the shortage of electricity persistently continued, and yet more RPPs were installed.