LAHORE: An accountability court on Wednesday handed over Lahore Waste Management Company’s (LWMC) former managing director Waseem Ajmal to National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on a 10-day physical remand in Rs 1 billion LWMC scam.
Accountability Court Judge Ameer Muhammad Khan conducted the case proceedings wherein Waseem Ajmal was also produced.
The NAB prosecutor submitted that the accused was a grade-20 officer and he had served as LWMC managing director.
He submitted that the accused had been arrested on the charges of embezzling over Rs 1 billion in the LWMC project. He requested with the court for granting 15-day remand of the accused of investigation.
However, the defence counsel opposed the remand plea and arrest of his client in the case. He submitted that Waseem Ajmal would be promoted to Grade-21 after three months course.
The NAB prosecutor submitted that NAB Chairman permission was sought for the arrest of Grade-17 and above officers, in response to a court query.
Waseem Ajmal told the court that he remained under NAB custody for 48 days in Saaf Pani case but he was not investigated for more than two hours. He further submitted that all charges levelled against him were baseless in the LWMC case.
Subsequently, the court handed over Waseem Ajmal to the Bureau on 10-day physical remand and directed for producing him on November 30.
According to the NAB, the contract for preparation of consultancy services was awarded to the LWMC by the city district government, Rawalpindi in 2012. As per terms of reference of the contract, the consultants were supposed to prepare the cost estimates and pre-qualification criteria.
The bidding documents included draft agreements for the outsourcing of the Solid Waste Management (SWM) services whereas, the core team of the collective consultancy team comprised the members who were associated with preparation of cost estimates, bidding documents etc — LWMC MD Waseem Ajmal, CFO Rana Muhammad Arif, GM Procurement retired Col Muhammad Tahir and GM Legal Operations Khalid Majeed.
It said being former MD and team leader of the LWMC, Waseem Ajmal held a meeting on April 26, 2014, in which he intentionally concealed the details from the other board members of the meeting, it said.
The suspect intentionally concealed the fact that the initial cost estimate regarding the project’s labour cost of M/s Albirak which was already included in the initial cost estimates was got re-issued during the bidding process. The act on part of Waseem Ajmal caused a loss of Rs 1.27 billion to the exchequer.
It is pertinent to mention here that a Lahore High Court division bench had granted bail to Waseem Ajmal in Saaf Pani case.
