Gilani son named in drug
scam By Syed Fazl-e-Haider
KARACHI - The family of Prime Minister
Yousuf Raza Gilani, for the second time in barely
a year, has become enmeshed in a corruption
scandal, with son Ali Musa Gilani accused of being
involved in a near-US$8 million scam involving
allocation of a controlled drug, ephedrine.
Musa Gilani failed to appear before a
three-member Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief
Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, at the weekend
after being away in South Africa. The charges,
laid by Pakistan's Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) come
after another son, Abdul Qadir Gilani, was
summoned to appear before the Federal
Investigation Agency (FIA) in January 2011,
accused of receiving 20 million rupees as
kickbacks related to hiring of accommodation for
Haj pilgrims.
The charges come amid
growing concern at the levels of
corruption surrounding
Gilani's government while it fails to raise
sufficient legitimate tax and other revenues to
cover its needs. Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh in
Washington this week is seeking to secure a new
$4.3 billion loan from the International Monetary
Fund to repay its foreign debts.
The drug
scam, to which many influential people have
already been linked, came to light this month when
the ANF told the Supreme Court that an ephedrine
quota worth 7 billion rupees (US$7.7 million) was
given out of turn to two local pharmaceutical
companies under the influence of the Prime
Minister's Secretariat and Musa Gilani. On April
20, the ANF told the court of eight new suspects
in the case, including Musa Gilani and the prime
minister's principal secretary, Khushnood Akhtar
Lashari.
Ephedrine, known as "poor man's
cocaine", is used in making medicines for the
common cold, flu and asthma.
"Documentary
evidence shows that Lashari, in the presence of
Ali Musa Gilani, used to allocate quotas for
ephedrine. It can be safely assumed that this
[ephedrine] was issued for him [Ali Musa Gilani],"
Dawn quoted ANF's Colonel (retd) Syed Akhtar Abbas
as saying.
An ANF report submitted to the
court says the accused allegedly allocated 6,500
kilograms to Berlex Lab International, based in
Multan, and 2,500kg to Islamabad-based Danas
Pharma (Pvt) Ltd in 2010-11 for export to Iraq and
Afghanistan. The allocation violated a United
Nations convention that set the export quota for
Iraq at 3,000kg and Afghanistan at 50kg.
Ephedrine was allocated to the two
companies out of turn, despite the fact that there
were 20 companies waiting for allocation of their
quota.
A case was registered against the
two companies last October, saying they had
obtained export quotas for the drug in collusion
with the health ministry officials. The companies
claimed to have manufactured 218 million and 85
million tablets, respectively, from ephedrine, but
failed to produce proper sale records.
The
drug scam has already cost senior ANF officials
their jobs, echoing events around the Haj case
involving Gilani's other son, Abdul Qadir. ANF
Director General, Maj-Gen Shakeel Hussain and two
colleagues investigating the ephedrine case were
removed from their positions earlier this month.
Hussain was removed after he assured the Supreme
Court that he would proceed against all
influential people involved in the scam in
accordance with the law.
Last year, the
Director of the Federal Investigation Agency,
Hussain Asghar, was removed after he issued a
notice to Abdul Qadir asking him to record a
statement before the FIA team investigating the
Haj scam.
Pakistan's The News recently
commented,
"There it is again: another
corruption scandal that stretches out into the
highest sanctums of power. The memory of how the
head investigator in the Haj scam was
transferred after he summoned the son of the
Prime Minister, Abdul Qadir Gilani, to record
his statement is still fresh. And already, we
have another reminder that the near and dear
ones of those in power think they can get away
with defying the law.
The present
government is one of the most corrupt in the
world, according to Transparency International of
Pakistan (TIP). In 2010, the value of overall
corruption rose to 223 billion rupees, from 195
billion rupees a year earlier, according to the
organization's national corruption perception
survey. The government could raise $10 billion
additional revenues every year by curbing
corruption from government departments and through
honest collection of taxes, according to TIP.
Corruption runs through state-owned
enterprises, tendering and bidding processes, on
to spot-fixing in sports. It has driven major
companies towards bankruptcy, both financially and
functionally. Pakistan International Airlines,
Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Steel Mill are
showing huge losses and seeking bailout packages
to stave off their imminent closure.
Ordinary people have to offer bribes in
their dealings with government institutions to
access basic public services, while many financial
scams and scandals, involving various authorities
and billions of rupees, have been unearthed.
Among them, the use of rental power plants
by industry to get around the country's dismal
electricity shortages. Huge sums of money are
being paid to firms contracted by the government
to set up such plants but the country is still
facing acute shortages due to lower power
generation.
It has been easier for the
government to raise energy prices than to check
corruption in the energy sector or to reduce
expenditure to bridge revenue shortfalls.
Critics say that escalating prices of
essential consumer items under Gilani's coalition
government have burdened ordinary civilians while
benefiting mafia-type businesses.
The cost
of a minimum food basket has risen 79% under the
current government, according to the Planning
Commission of Pakistan, while a lack of investment
has driven unemployment to 10%
Meanwhile,
the government's failure to secure adequate tax
and other revenue has driven up its borrowing in
the first nine months of the current fiscal year,
which ends on June 30. Government loans from the
central and local banks passed 1.01 trillion
rupees as of April 6, up 143% against the
corresponding week last year, according to the
State Bank of Pakistan.
Local analysts
believe that fears of higher inflation linked to
excessive government borrowing forced the central
bank to leave its benchmark interest rate
unchanged at 12% on April 13.
Syed
Fazl-e-Haider
(http://www.syedfazlehaider.com) is a
development analyst in Pakistan. He is the author
of many books, including The Economic
Development of Balochistan (2004). He can be
contacted at sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com.
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