Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lt Gen (rtd) Nazir Ahmed Butt said corruption worth Rs. 3 trillion has been uncovered in Karachi due to falsified documents of 7,500 acres of property in the port city.
Addressing the Association of Builders and Developers (ABAD) on Monday, he warned that opening these files would cause a major upheaval.
The NAB chief criticized the Lyari Development Authority (LDA), Karachi Development Authority (KDA), and Malir Development Authority (MDA) for failing to hand over possession to allottees for the past 40 years.
ABAD chief Muhammad Hassan Bakhshi said 85,000 illegal buildings have been constructed in Karachi over the past five years while the Sindh government is selling land to select individuals instead of conducting fair auctions. The NAB chairman called for evidence to determine whether these buildings should be demolished or regularized.
The chairman also revealed that in the past eight months, NAB recovered 1.8 million acres of agricultural land worth Rs. 4 trillion in Sindh which it handed over to the Revenue Department. He acknowledged the lack of a centralized land record system in Sindh and committed to taking action in this regard.
He added that NAB plans to establish a regional office in Gwadar, where land scams worth Rs. 3 trillion are under investigation.
ABAD’s Patron-in-Chief Mohsin Sheikhani proposed that all land transactions be verified by NAB and called for third-party digitization of land records. He argued that corrupt institutions are manipulating records to their advantage and should be dealt with.