ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet Division (CD) has informed the Ministry of Law and Justice (MoLJ) that the Assets Recovery Unit (ARU) under Imran Khan’s accountability czar Shehbaz Akbar spent Rs351 million from the national treasury but it failed to recover a single penny.
In a shocking revelation, the CD through a summary informed the MoLJ that the ARU has gone “dormant.”
The ARU did not recover any assets, the CD informed the ministry.
“After the change of regime, the ARU is dormant as there is no Advisor to the Prime Minister to head the ARU.”
The ARU was established by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government with an aim to bring back the alleged looted money of US$11 billion.
Sources said that the federal government allocated a budget of Rs350.6 million for ARU in the past five years.
More than Rs67.7 million was allocated in 2018-19, Rs76 million in 2019-20, Rs78.5 million in 2020-21, Rs79 million in 2021-22 and Rs49 million in 2022-23. The management spent Rs79 million on operations of ARU.
The ARU management spent Rs15.4 million on different international trips and other expenditures of the unit’s chief Shahzad Akbar and his team in 2018-19, Rs26.8 million in 2019-20, and Rs22.4 million in 2020-21.
The federal government also shouldered the cost of Rs14 million on other operations of the unit in 2021-22.
The exorbitant expenditure on foreign trips forced the country’s top audit body to conduct a special audit of the unit’s expenditure.
“Shehzad Akbar and his teams made 25 international trips to UAE, Switzerland, London, Dubai, Beijing, etc. The performance, however, in terms of recovery remained dismal,” revealed a senior official associated with the ARU.
It was always going to be an uphill task for the government to recover $11 billion of ill-gotten wealth stashed abroad, an informed official said. Despite the cooperation of the FIA and the FBR, the unit could not make any significant progress on tracing assets of Pakistani nationals in 29 countries – even the Emirati authorities (citing confidentiality clauses) have yet to respond to us, added the official.
Shehzad Akbar and his team made the first trip to Switzerland on Nov. 28, 2018. They spent five days meeting Swiss authorities to gather information about Pakistanis’ accounts. This trip cost around Rs1 million to the national exchequer. Then the team went to London on Feb 4, 2019 and then again on May 22, 2019 to fetch some assets details of Sharif family and others.
The team then went to Dubai on June 30, 2019 to gather information about ex-finance minister Ishaq Dar and other Pakistanis who own properties in the UAE, revealing the available details. Their 18-day trips to London and Dubai cost Rs2 million.
An ARU team made four more trips on May 22, 2019, July 1, 2019, Feb. 4, 2019 and Sep. 23, 2019, to London. In total, they spent 13 days over there spending some Rs2.5 million.
Another team of the asset recovery unit again went to China on Oct 29, 2018 and Switzerland on Nov 11, 2018. Their one and a half week long trip cost around Rs2 million.
The ARU officials were seeking information on the Multan Metro Project and Bullet Train Project from Chinese authorities from Oct 29, 2018 to Nov 2, 2018 but were unable to make any headway, the officials said.
The government allocated Rs16 million in 2018-19 and then Rs8 million in the last fiscal year with an additional amount of Rs7 million on account of staff salaries and other expenditure in the past seventeen months, the officials added.
The ARU and the FBR were not in smooth communiqué since the Unit was trying to acquire huge data pertaining to overseas Pakistanis who otherwise claimed amnesty, an FBR official claimed.
