By Zulfiqar Ahmad
ISLAMABAD, Aug 20: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Khyber Pakhtunkhwaon, on Thursday arrested Prince Khalid Pervez, the APML member-elect of the District Council Chitral along with four other people for their alleged involvement in the embezzlement of Rs76 million forest royalty.
A statement issued by NAB Islamabad said that its KP chapter arrested Gulzarur Rehman, former divisional forest officer Chitral currently working as an assistant professor at the Forest College, Peshawar, Prince Khalid Pervez, Noor Shahideen, Rehmat Karim and Malak Shaye.
It said that the bureau arrested them for allegedly depriving genuine concessionists of the forest royalty amounting to Rs76 million.
“On the complaint of poor concessionists of a locality from Chitral, NAB KP initiated an inquiry which revealed that Noor Shahideen made a fake joint forest management committee (JFMC) and fraudulently made himself chairman through the active connivance of other accused persons.”
As per policy of forest department /government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, forest royalty shall be distributed amongst the concessionists of the locality equally.
The accused persons later diverted and embezzled an amount of Rs76 million through complex banking transactions and pocketed the amount.
An official of NAB said NAB KP was actively perusing the case, adding the accused would be produced before an accountability court in Peshawar for obtaining their physical remand.