A senior bureaucrat and former managing director (MD) of Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), Waseem Ajmal has told an accountability court that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is forcing him into becoming “approver” against former chief minister (CM) Shehbaz Sharif, Dawn reported.
According to the details, NAB had earlier arrested Waseem, BS-20 officer, on charges of embezzling Rs1 billion in LWMC project and presented him before the court to seek his physical remand as he was arrested the other day.
During his appearance, Waseem stated before the court that the investigating officer, during the interrogation, kept persuading him to become an approver against the former CM.
He added that the NAB possessed complete record of the case but it wanted to extract a ‘confessional’ statement from him.
“The NAB had also put same pressure on me in Saaf Pani case,” said Ajmal adding that the bureau previously kept him in custody for 48 days in the Saaf Pani case but did not interrogate him beyond two hours.
He further claimed that the NAB wasted precious time of his career and found nothing against him. The Lahore High Court (LHC) had earlier released Ajmal on bail in the Saaf Pani case on January 30 last.
The NAB prosecutor had argued that then CM Shehbaz Sharif awarded the contract of LWMC project to a Turkish company-Al-Bayrak on inflated rates which caused a loss of over Rs1 billion to the national exchequer.
The prosecutor said that Ajmal being MD and team leader of the LWMC held a meeting on April 26, 2014, in which he intentionally concealed details from other board members.
Ajmal’s counsel Mian Ali Ashfaq opposed the remand and said his client had to attend a three-month course for promotion in next grade. The court, however, granted 10-day physical remand of the accused to the NAB and sought his appearance again on Nov 30.
