Will Nawaz’s adviser return public money?

Official documents presented before the special committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday revealed that Tariq Fatemi, former diplomat and now senior foreign policy adviser to PML-N President Nawaz Sharif, had illegally drawn $2,460 from the national kitty when he was serving as the high commissioner of Pakistan to Zimbabwe in 1995.
The audit report for the year 1998-99 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented before the PAC’s special committee revealed that Fatemi proceeded to Pretoria on April 4, 1995 for the treatment of his wife. “It was a private tour but he claimed daily allowance and mileage charge for 13 nights amounting to $2,406. The payment was inadmissible and stands recoverable,” the audit objection said.
The audit paragraph was not taken up in PAC’s special committee meeting as the convenor, Zahid Hamid, had given general directions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for recovering all amounts paid in violation of rules to diplomats and other staff of Pakistani missions abroad.
Fatemi has served as the high commissioner to Zimbabwe (1993-1996) with concurrent accreditation to Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, and also as the ambassador to the United States for three months (September to December 1999). For the last several years, Fatemi has been is working with Nawaz in the capacity of senior foreign policy adviser.
Meanwhile, expressing dissatisfaction over the inquiry conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the sale of the Pakistani Chancery Building in Jakarta, the PAC monitoring and implementation committee directed the ministry to fix responsibility and propose disciplinary action against those responsible. The committee, which met with Yasmeen Rehman in the chair, was presented the inquiry report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which revealed serious irregularities in the sale of the chancery building in Jakarta in 2002.
Regarding then head of chancery SMH Razvi, the Foreign Ministry’s inquiry report says: “As regard SMH Razvi, this committee is of the opinion that he has fallen victim to efforts to clear the name of the ambassador under any circumstances. His innocence would have been vindicated if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was allowed to undertake inquiry per normal rules and procedures,” the report adds.
The audit officials had informed the committee that in February 2002, Pakistan’s ambassador to Indonesia Gen (r) Mustafa divested the chancery building at a cost of $1.320 million and remitted the same to Pakistan by crediting it to the federal treasury. When then deputy head of chancery Syed Mushtaq Haider Rizvi pointed out the irregularity in the sale in 2002 and informed the Foreign Ministry, then president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf’s Secretariat sent a high-level inquiry team headed by cabinet secretary Javed Masood to Jakarta to probe into the allegations of embezzlement.
However, the inquiry committee gave a clean chit to the sale agreement and recommended that the deal be approved from a competent authority. Accordingly, a meeting of the committee was held under the chairmanship of Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf on May 16, 2002, during which it was decided that the sale of chancery building in Jakarata was legal and therefore stood approved. Mushtaq Haider Rizvi, the person who pointed out the irregularity, was recalled to Pakistan and served as an OSD for six years until his retirement.