Khyber Pakhtunkhwa National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Thursday arrested the ex-divisional forest officer Chitral Gulzar-ur-Rehman and three others on charges of embezzlement of Rs 76 million.
According to a NAB spokesman, Gulzar who is presently working as Assistant Professor Forest College Peshawar and DFO Chitral Prince Khalid Pervez, Member District Council Chitral, Noor Shahideen, Rehmat Karim and Malak Shaye were allegedly involved in embezzling funds. They were depriving genuine concessionists of their due right of Forest Royalty in connivance with each other.
On the complaint of poor concessionists from the locality of Chitral, the KP NAB initiated an inquiry. The inquiry revealed that as per the policy of the forest department, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Forest Royalty will be distributed amongst the concessionists of the locality equally through Joint Forest Management Committee, nevertheless Noor Shahideen (Private Person) made a fake Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC) and fraudulently made himself chairman of the committee through the active connivance of other accused persons, he said.
The accused persons later on diverted the Rs 76 million through complex banking transactions and pocketed the same.
NAB is actively perusing the case and the accused persons will be produced before the Accountability Court Peshawar to obtain their physical remand, he added.
