ISLAMABAD: The Senate Subcommittee on Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), formed to probe the alleged sale of PIA bus 310 to a German firm in violation of rules, was informed Tuesday that the name of the former PIA chief executive officer (CEO), a German national, was removed from the Exit Control List (ECL) by the specific order of the then interior minister on a letter from the Foreign Office.
The committee, headed by Senator Farhatullah Babar and including Senator Nauman Wazir and Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, met in the office of the Civil Aviation Division secretary in the PIA complex in Islamabad. The meeting was also attended by high ranking officials of PIA, interior ministry, defence ministry, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and others.
The meeting was informed that under directions of the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly (NA), the case had since been referred to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for inquiry. Besides, FIA had also taken notice and started its own investigations into the matter.
The Civil Aviation secretary said that the sale of the aircraft in question had been stopped and that it was still the property of the government. However, he said that negotiations for not charging the parking fee for the aircraft were still ongoing.
The committee members were surprised at the glaring flaws in the tendering process while neither the PIA Procurement director nor the managing director (MD) had the authority to finalise the sale and move the aircraft outside the country to Germany.
The committee noted that when the former PIA MD Bernd Hildenbrand failed to return to Pakistan after the expiry of a one-month period, the interior ministry wrote to the Foreign Office to take up the matter with the German Embassy in Islamabad on whose guarantee and commitment the permission had been granted.
We would demand the Foreign Office to produce the written commitment/guarantee given by the German embassy and ask whether and when it took up the matter with the German Embassy in Islamabad and what was the response of the embassy in this connection, Senator Farhatullah Babar said. We must not let the former managing director escape from accountability regarding the attempted sale of the aircraft, he added.
If someone gave a guarantee on his behalf, the guarantor must be held accountable, he said, adding that if there was no such guarantee, then the officials responsible for allowing the former MD to leave the country must be held accountable.
