Islamabad March 21 (TNS): While housing societies, mostly illegal, have witnessed a mushroom growth across all zones of Islamabad amidst the Capital Development Authority claiming to take action against such residential schemes, a racket of senior officials in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has jumped into the fray to take maximum advantage of the situation by demanding hush money and other benefits from their management, TNS learnt reliably.
As the NAB is reportedly preparing a list of corrupt officials, a racket in the bureau led by a senior official has allegedly been blackmailing and harassing the management of housing societies, seeking monetary benefits, plots, houses and flats etc by employing the stick and carport policy
Several officials of these housing societies and schemes told TNS that the NAB officials have been blackmailing and extorting money and other illegal benefits by misusing their official authority and through sheer intimidation.
The NAB racket, according to them, first demands a bribe from the management of illegal societies to close cases against them and when they refuse to budge, they are implicated in concocted cases.
There is a dozen of housing schemes operating illegally across all zones of Islamabad and they continue to thrive as the CDA has completely surrendered to the land grabbers and their crooks backed by politicians and senior bureaucrats, while the civic body has issued a list of illegal housing societies across the federal capital.
According to sources, the NAB officials affiliated with the racket conducts illegal raids, issues notices and summons owners and management to certain locations, out of the sphere of the bureau, to strike deals involving illegal monetary benefits and plots worth millions of rupees.
The sources also claimed that the
racket uses the official position and authority as a tool to harass and blackmail the management of housing schemes threatening them of filing cases and references against them. According to some complainants in these societies, when someone refuses to bow to their blackmailing and harassment, the NAB officials of the racket get cases filed against them.
In the past too, the NAB officials had been accused of misuse of authority and blackmailing and extortion.
Talking to TNS, NAB Chairman Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal said that he has also received complaints of corruption against some senior officials and he has ordered a probe. “Nobody, how influential or mighty he may be, will not be spared and the NAB will be cleansed of corrupt and dishonest people. No one will be spared. The NAB will put its own house in order before laying its hand on others,” he said. The NAB chief vowed that “the country will soon be made corruption-free and every one of us will have to work for a clean and healthy society”.
