Bashir Hussain Azad | Chitral Today
CHITRAL, Sept 3, 2025: Leaders of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mine Owners Association and representatives from the southern belt of Lower Chitral here urged the KP chief minister, NAB, Anti-Corruption Establishment and the army to act against massive corruption in local mineral resources.
At a press conference in Chitral Press Club on Wednesday, Mohiuddin Sani, Umair, Junaid Ahmed, Habibullah, Aman Khan and others said billions of rupees worth of corruption had taken place in Damel and Arandu. They accused former senior officials of the minerals department and a provincial bureaucrat of colluding in illegal mining of gold, copper and iron ore.
They said these officials awarded leases to frontmen and favoured defaulters through political influence. They alleged that in 2022, then secretary minerals Humayun Khan and his associate Hameedullah Shah obtained a lease of Pakistan’s largest iron ore deposit in Damel through their frontman, Faisal Saleem. They said the group exported 35,000 tonnes of iron ore to China worth over Rs4.5 billion.
They added that Faisal Saleem submitted a fake audit report to hide profits and caused heavy losses to the exchequer. They also alleged that on the directives of then additional chief secretary Shahab Ali Shah, the same group formed a firm named “Mega Parachinar” through Faisal Saleem. The officials published auction notices in obscure newspapers and awarded mining leases to the firm overnight. They noted that the department later cancelled the leases but the group is now pressuring the current secretary minerals and the appellate tribunal to restore them.
They said the firm defaulted on Rs270 million to the minerals department but was still being considered for a “green sheet.” They called this another attempt to legitimise corruption.