QUETTA: An accountability court here on Tuesday jailed former finance secretary Mushtaq Ahmed Raisani for 10 years and former adviser to the chief minister on finance Mir Khalid Langove for 26 months in a mega corruption case.

Accountability court judge Munawar Ahmad Shahwani also ordered confiscation of their movable and immovable assets worth billions of rupees and depositing the money into the exchequer.

The accountability court disqualified both the convicts from holding any public and official posts for 10 years under Section 15 of the Accountability Act.

The court had reserved its judgement after completing hearing of the case registered in 2017 following recovering Rs630 million in cash, gold ornaments and bonds from the residence of Mushtaq Raisani. Then he, along with Khalid Langove and some other officials, was arrested.

Accountability court disqualifies him, co-accused from holding public posts

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Balochistan, with the help of officials of the local government and finance department and the finance adviser, investigated the case.

Mushtaq Raisani, in collusion with Khalid Langove, embezzled Rs2.25 billion by illegally releasing Rs2.34bn to municipal committees of Khaliqabad and Mach. Later, when more revelations came to light, the house of Mushtaq Raisani was raided in accordance with the law.

The national media not only provided live coverage of the raid but also exposed the evidence of corruption.

When the facts came to light, Khalid Langove’s frontman and co-accused Sohail Majeed Shah confessed to the crime and returned Rs960m to the government with the approval of the court. During the investigation, Rs1bn was recovered from Saleem Shah and his benamidars in the shape of 11 properties in the Defence Housing Authority, Karachi.

After approving a plea-bargain of co-accused Tariq and Naeem Iqbal, Rs130m was recovered from them, whereas NAB rejected the plea-bargain application of Mushtaq Raisani.

“On the directive of anti-graft watchdog’s chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal, an investigation team of NAB Balochistan worked day and night and filed a reference in the court in the light of solid evidence against the accused,” officials said.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2021