ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Accountability Shahzad Akbar on Wednesday said that the first major recovery of Rs2.1 billion is a major breakthrough in the fake accounts case.
Shahzac Akbar tweeted said that the recovery took place due to the pleas bargain.
He said that the suspect confessed to his crime in relation to the issue of Omni group.
He said that the Joint Investigation Team and National Accountability Bureau should be lauded for their role in the case.
Akbar’s comment comes a day after an accountability court approved a plea bargain worth Rs2.12bn between suspects linked to the Sindh Nooriabad Power project company and NAB.
The investigation officer while submitting a report to Judge Mohammad Bashir had said that the suspects, Syed Asif Mahmood and Syed Arif Ali, were ready to deposit Rs2.12bn into the national exchequer under a plea bargain deal arrangement with NAB authorities under Section 25(b) of the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999.
Judge Bashir asked the suspects if they were entering the plea bargain deal under coercion or free will to which they replied they were doing so of their own will.
Mahmood, the CEO of M/S Technomen Kinetic Pvt Ltd and Ali, director Nooriabad Power Company, were arrested by NAB on May 21 in connection with alleged misappropriation and money laundering in the Nooriabad power project.
NAB had stated then that the suspects were taken into custody for extending illegal favours to M/S Technomen Kinetic Pvt Ltd and others in projects of Sindh Nooriabad Power Company and Sindh Transmission and Dispatch Company (STDC), causing a $16 million loss to the national exchequer.
According to the prosecution, the NAB chairman had approved the application of the suspects seeking release under the plea bargain deal.
The fake bank accounts case involves alleged money laundering worth billions of rupees through 29 accounts, which were found opened in three banks — Summit Bank, Sindh Bank and United Bank Ltd.
The Federal Investigation Agency had named PPP leaders Asif Ali Zardari, his sibling Faryal Talpur, Omni Group chairman Anwar Majeed, his sons and over 10 others as suspects in an interim charge sheet filed in a banking court in August last year.
The case was transferred in March this year from the banking court in Karachi to the accountability court of Rawalpindi for trial.