MUZAFFARGARH: In what seems to be a positive development, the State Bank of Pakistan has agreed to pay over Rs 400 million, allegedly embezzled by a group of the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) employees, Muzaffargarh branch, to the Punjab government in the wake of a pension scam unearthed few weeks ago.
In a letter written to the Punjab finance secretary, the central bank has agreed to transfer the “embezzled amount” to the Punjab government.
Earlier, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had arrested two NBP officials and a district accounts officer for investigation purposes. According to sources, the NAB had seized bank accounts and confiscated property worth Rs 100 million of the two officials.
Sources added that if somehow the recovery of the embezzled amount is managed, it would be one the rare cases of plundered money being returned to the national exchequer.
Pertinent to mention that the pension fraud case was detected by Muzaffargarh District Accounts Officer (DAO) Anwaar Chishti, a young CSP officer, and had been pursuing the case as a complainant since last three months.
Chishti was recently appointed in Muzaffargarh who initiated the post-audit of manual pension payments, which was not done since long. It had been learnt that there was a grave negligence on account of the treasury officials of the district accounts office who never bothered to execute post audit of the pension vouchers, which led to the fraud.
