ISLAMABAD: The monotony of the technical and sleep-inducing Supreme Court proceedings on the decline of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) was broken by some startling remarks made by defence lawyer Khalid Anwar on Wednesday.
Criticising what he called the discriminatory attitude of the state towards the defending parties in the suo motu case, he charged that the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) had spared tycoon Riaz Laljee, a friend of President Asif Ali Zardari, and instead pointed its guns at his employees for Rs22 billion corruption in the PSM.
And before everyone present in the court could digest Mr Anwar’s remarks, Deputy Attorney-General Abid Saqi threw a bombshell by telling the bench that FIA’s hands were tied. “Our hands are tied. We have registered a case against Laljee’s daughter. However, she is abroad,” he said.
But as soon as he realised that his defence of the FIA could be seen as an indictment, he immediately called his statement a “slip of the tongue”.
The case is being heard by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday.
It relates to the firing of former PSM chairman Moeen Aftab Sheikh by the establishment division on the advice of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat on Aug 18 last year because of heavy losses the industry was incurring.
The suo motu notice was taken on an article by Dr Ayesha Siddiqa that appeared in Dawn on Sept 11 in which she had mentioned five concerns as the main beneficiaries of a new sales policy adopted by the PSM — Metropolitan, Amreli Steels, Abbas Engineering, Al Abbas Steel and Abbas Steel.
Mr Sheikh had taken over as the chairman on May 26, 2008.
Mr Laljee’s name had earlier surfaced in the court when it was alleged he was the main culprit behind the scam and was acting as a frontman of an important personality.
After hearing allegations and counter-allegations from both sides the court ordered the FIA to conduct its inquiry justly and fairly without causing harassment to anyone and getting influenced by the court proceedings.
The agency was asked to deal with the issue strictly in accordance with rules.
“Our objective is simple,” the chief justice said, “which is to save this mother industry because the loss the mills has incurred belongs to the public exchequer. This industry is the backbone of this nation.”
Justice Ramday regretted that the court’s orders about action to be taken by the government faced resistance, forcing the judges to step back to save their honour.
The court did not accept a request by Advocate Anwar, representing the Amreli Steels, the largest bar rolling mills with an installed capacity of 180,000 tons per annum, to appoint two accounting firms to determine the factual position.
Mr Anwar severely criticised FIA’s investigations and alleged that the way the agency was proceeding would terrorise the market and paralyse the steel business, while the guilty would go scot-free.
“They (FIA) want to destroy everything,” the counsel alleged, adding that corruption was not the only reason behind the PSM losses but bureaucratic incompetence in taking timely decisions and long-term contracts made during the recession period which should have been renegotiated were also important factors.
He expressed the fear that at least 40 steel companies were going to shut down because of harassment by the FIA, causing huge joblessness.
He said five people who had been on pre-arrest bail for five months were not being involved in the FIA inquiry.
Mr Anwar said the PSM with a 1.1 million tons capacity based on an outmoded and inefficient Russian system, with 17,000 employees leading to continuing financial drain, was only fit to be thrown away. A similar plant in Iran with a capacity of 3.5 million tons, he said, employed only 7,800 people.
He said the mills had been on the verge of shutting down for the past seven months. He said institutions like railways, steel mills and PIA were causing a huge loss to the nation.
The liquidity crunch due to severe economic recession the world over had affected almost all business enterprises everywhere, but incorrect decision making, bureaucratic delays and gross inefficiency accentuated the loss of the PSM, he said.
PSM sales fell from Rs5 billion in July 2008 to Rs1.131 billion in October 2008 because surplus and cheap steel from the world market flooded the local market.
Low demand of PSM products caused the piling up of a huge inventory of finished goods which ultimately resulted in serious liquidity problems, he said.
DAG Saqi informed the court that 14 arrests had been made and the accounts of several companies frozen.
In 10 cases, he said, Rs8 billion corruption through clandestine benefits to different dealers had been unearthed.
He assured the court that a comprehensive report on the quantum of corruption in the steel mills would be presented soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment