Ex-interior secretary Shahid Khan made Rs8m in three days in shady plot deal: report

The Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has recommended an enquiry against Shahid Khan, former federal secretary for interior and the incumbent secretary to the president of Pakistan, after it was revealed that the senior bureaucrat had sold a commercial plot in Islamabad, allotted to him by the National Police Foundation (NPF) in 2014, for five times the value he paid to the Foundation just three days after he was handed over its possession.
According to a report in a local English daily, the AGP’s report presented to parliament recently stated that Shahid Khan had been offered a commercial plot measuring 200 square yards by the NPF in the federal capital’s Sector E-11 for Rs2 million in 2014. Khan, who was then serving as the chairman of the Foundation’s Committee of Administration, accepted the ‘offer’ and paid the full value of the plot.
The plot was officially handed over to him on December 5, 2014.
However, the auditors were surprised to learn that Khan sold the plot for Rs10 million, exactly three days later, on December 8.
The audit objected to NPF over the sale of the plot at a price well below the market rate, the report stated.
“The price of the plot was not determined as per prevailing market rates at the time of offering allotment. The sale of the plot at five times the purchase price within three days clearly shows the disparity in the pricing mechanism of NPF … Audit is of the view that the plot was allotted only to benefit the individual,” the audit report read.
According to the paper’s report, the AGP subsequently recommended an enquiry into the deal to fix responsibility apart from recovering the market cost of the plot.
“Audit recommends that market cost of the plot may be recovered besides fixing the responsibility [for underselling],” the report said.
The Public Accounting Officer was told about the anomaly on December 5, 2016, but the departmental accounts committee was not convened till the audit report was finalised.
The media outfit said that it had contacted Shahid Khan for his comment on the issue but the bureaucrat simply said that he had done nothing illegal and would settle the matter in court.
The NPF was set up in 1975 under the Charitable Endowment Act for the welfare of police officials. The interior secretary heads its committee of administration as an ex-officio chairman.