ISLAMABAD : Murad Ali Shah, the chief minister of Sindh, submitted a petition on Wednesday in the nation’s capital’s accountability court asking for the Nooriabad Power Plant corruption case to be dismissed.
The chief minister filed the plea as a result of the federal government amending the NAB statutes, which prevented the accountability courts and anti-graft body from taking on cases with less than Rs500 million in damages.
The NAB has been given notice by Accountability Court Judge Mohammad Bashir, who has also postponed the hearing until January 12.
In the corruption case, other accused have already submitted requests for acquittal, claiming that the NAB was not the proper court to hear their cases.
In its referral, the anti-corruption watchdog said that Mr. Saeed, the CM’s adviser at the time, released funding for the power projects in contravention of the law. Additionally, it claimed that billions of rupees were stolen from projects connected to the Sindh Transmission and Dispatch Company and the Nooriabad Power Company.
The Nooriabad Power Project was supposed to be launched in 2012, but it never happened because of a delay in regulatory permissions.
At a cost of Rs13 billion, the project was officially opened in August 2014 via a public-private collaboration. Costing Rs. 1.95 billion, a 95-km-long, 132kV double-circuit transmission line was built between Nooriabad and Karachi.
According to NAB, the practise caused the national exchequer to suffer a loss of $16 million.