LAHORE: A spokesman for the Punjab government, Malik Ahmed Khan, on Tuesday called into question the character of Faisal Subhan, the chief executive officer of Capital Engineering, who is accused of involvement in alleged corruption in the Multan Metro Bus project. “Subhan created a fake company by colluding with a man named Aijaz,” Malik Ahmed Khan said while speaking to a private television news channel. He said that counterfeit letters from Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Mushahid Hussain Syed were used to create the company. “China’s regulatory authority probing into the matter had discovered that such a company did not exist,” Khan said. According to media reports last year, Capital Construction and Engineering Ltd, a subcontractor of the MMBP, had been involved in laundering money along with Chinese company Jiangsu Yabaite Technology. However, the chief minister had declared in a subsequent press conference that the company “did not exist”. He had also vehemently denied any corruption charges against him. On Monday, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan had said that Subhan had confessed to the Chinese regulatory authority investigating corruption charges in the project that Shehbaz and his family received hefty kickbacks in their overseas accounts. “Shehbaz Sharif has spent Rs 9 trillion through his chosen bureaucrats like Ahad Cheema,” Imran had said. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) had blacklisted Jiangsu Yabaite Technology Co Ltd forever and awarded the maximum penalties to the company and its owner in December last year. The Chinese company’s fraud was highlighted when the Pakistani media reported that Shehbaz was allegedly involved in money laundering and sent a huge amount of kickback money to China through Yabaite. The case was then referred to the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan. The National Accountability Bureau’s Multan extension had also started a probe into the alleged money laundering in the Multan Metro Bus project.
Published in Daily Times, February 28th 2018.
