Fawad Hasan Fawad suspended

After the arrest owing to the supposed involvement in Ashiana-e-Iqbal Housing Scheme scam, Civil Services Academy (CSA) Director General Fawad Hassan Fawad has been suspended from his position.

According to a notification issued by the federal government, Fawad has been “placed under suspension from the date of his arrest i.e. 05.07.2018 under CSR-194”.

“During suspension period, the officer will be entitled to the subsistence grant as admissible under FR-52,” the notification said.

On July 5, NAB arrested the CSA director general from Lahore office after he failed to satisfy investigators regarding his involvement in the Rs 14b scam. The court had granted his physical remand as per NAB’s request.

The ex-principal secretary to the PM is under scrutiny for constructing a megamall in Rawalpindi.

Fawad has been accused of pressuring Punjab Land Development Company (PLDC) chief executive officer (CEO) Tahir Khursheed and Project Director Ali Moazzam to cancel the Ashiana contract with Chaudhry Latif and Sons and award it to his blue-eyed contractor, Lahore Casa Developers—a proxy group of Paragon City (Pvt) Limited.

As a result, the government had to pay Rs5.9 million in compensation to the Chaudhry and Sons in 2013. In addition, the cost of the project had also escalated by billions of rupees due to the delay.

Further, he had allegedly concealed the inquiry committee report declaring the award of the contract to Chaudhry Latif and Sons as per the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules. NAB has already investigated former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif in this regard.

Listing the corruption charges, NAB officials claimed Fawad had wrongfully awarded the Ashiana contract to ‘favourites’, illegally awarded contracts for nine CNG stations at the behest of Sprint Energy, a subsidiary of JS Group, by preparing fake NoCs for transfer of sites from one district to another, and also worked in Bank Alfalah from 2005 to 2006, even though the Establishment Division had turned down his request to do so.