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A businessman has gone before a Latvian court in a murder plot case that may provide insight into the shadowy history of the country’s banking industry.
Martins Bunkus, an insolvency lawyer, is said to have been killed for money by Mihails Ulmans and co-defendant Aleksandrs Babenko.
According to reports, Mr. Bunkus discovered proof of money laundering at the LPB bank, which Mr. Ulmans partially owns.
In the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme case, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) announced on Saturday that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif did not abuse his public authority or receive any profit from government funds while serving as Punjab’s chief minister.
Other co-accused were also exonerated of any wrongdoing, including top bureaucrat Fawad Hasan Fawad, former Lahore Development Authority director general Ahad Khan Cheema, and Kamran Kiani, the brother of former army leader Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiani.
A little over a week after the prime leader, his family, and others were exonerated in a money laundering case, the corruption watchdog gave the prime minister another clean sheet.
The Ashiana scandal began in January 2018 after the then-opposition leader, NAB, accused Sharif of ordering the cancellation of a contract awarded to Chaudhry Latif and Sons, the successful bidder for the Ashiana-i-Iqbal Housing Scheme. This resulted in the contract being awarded to Lahore Casa Developers, a proxy group of Paragon City Private Limited, and costing Rs193 million.
He was also charged with ordering the Lahore Development Authority to take over the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project from the Punjab Land Development Company. Lahore Casa developers were given the contract, resulting in a Rs715 million loss and the project’s eventual collapse.
Shahbaz was also charged by NAB with ordering the Punjab Land Development Company to award Engineering Consultancy Services Punjab the contract for consulting services for the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project for Rs192m, despite the fact that Nespak, a reputable engineering consultancy, had quoted an actual cost of Rs35m.
Later in the year, Shehbaz was arrested along with senior bureaucrat Fawad Hasan Fawad, former director general of the Lahore Development Authority Ahad Khan Cheema, and numerous others.
READ: A chronology of the Ashiana Housing case’s events
But in February of this year, about a year after Shehbaz assumed office and became prime minister, a former chief engineer of the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), who had previously come to accept the Ashiana reference, withdrew his earlier remarks.
The NAB was sent notifications by an accountability court last month, requesting a response about the appeals for acquittal made by Shehbaz and Cheema, who are currently prime ministers.
The National Accounting Board (NAB) said in its response to the accountability court today that Shehbaz had reported the Ashiana-i-Iqbal project award to M/s Ch A Latif & Sons to the Punjab Anti-Corruption Establishment “by the law with no malafide intent.”
The report clears the premier of the charge of abusing his position by stating that the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 does not establish the offense.
According to the NAB, in response to the accusations made against his brother, former army leader Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, Kamran Kiani “was also not involved in causing any loss of funds of government or embezzlement of funds.”
The NAB declared that the former principal secretary to prime minister Fawad Hassan Fawad was “not involved in receiving any bribe from Kamran Kiani to favor him by misusing his authority” and thus dismissed him from the case.
The NAB added that neither the contractor nor the accused profited from any government spending or monies involved in the case.
The NAB stated that although there “may be some procedural flaws” in the way the request for proposals (RFP) was written and how M/s Lahore Casa Developers was then awarded the contract, “the same is not intentional or with malafide intent.”
The corruption monitor continued, “It has been established that no public office holder obtains a pecuniary benefit by misusing his official position.”
The NAB report states, “It is established beyond any doubt that there is no loss caused to the government exchequer,” taking into account fresh and supplementary data.
The accountability court has been asked by the NAB to make a decision about Shehbaz’s legal plea of acquittal.
