LAHORE: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has arrested four more officers of Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) in Ashiana housing scheme scam, and presented them before the court on Saturday.
According to NAB officials, the arrested officers include Imtiaz Haider, Bilal Qadwai, Colonel (r) Arif and Lahore Development Authority (LDA) Chief Engineer Israr Saeed.
The NAB officials interrogated the officers for over nine hours.
NAB started the investigation of Ashiana scam after the officials of Punjab government ordered to cancel the award of the contract of Ashiana-e-Iqbal to successful bidder Chaudhary Latif and sons, leading to handing over the contract to Lahore Casa Developers (JV) a proxy of Paragon City (Pvt) Limited which resulted in the loss of Rs 193 million approximately.
A statement by the NAB read that Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered PLDC to award consultancy services of Ashiana-e-Iqbal for almost Rs 192 million, but its actual cost was Rs 35 million.
The anti-graft watchdog has already arrested former director general LDA Ahad Cheema, and the chief executive officer of Bismillah Engineering Company, Shahid Siddiqui in the mega scam.