ISLAMABAD, March 6: An accountability court on Saturday granted a 15-day physical remand of three PTCL officials involved in the Rs141 million Built and Operate (BT) project scam.

Among the officials is member telecommunication in the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication Nooruddin Baqai.

The accountability judge, Mohammad Aslam Khan, adjourned the proceedings for March 20 with a direction to the authorities to produce ex-chief engineer (Private Sector Project PTCL headquarters) Nooruddin Baqai, ex-divisional accounts officer BT project Islamabad Rehmat Ali Sajid and ex-divisional engineer Asmatullah Khan on the next date of hearing.

The three accused were arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) late Friday night.

The BT project contract was signed between China Wanbao/ZTE and PTCL on October 17, 1998 under which 305,000 digital telephone lines would be installed.

These individuals are accused of committing supervisory lapses in looking after the financial interests of the state by not exercising their authority over the project which resulted in massive corruption and embezzlement.

FIA Inspector Chaudhry Aslam told the Rawalpindi accountability court that purchases made under the BT project were not supported by cost quotations which violated public procurement rules mandatory in all government transactions.

The case was referred to NAB to investigate large-scale purchases made by the PTCL officials associated with the project by making direct cash purchases without demanding estimates.

The officials associated with BT project made cheap quality purchases at exorbitant rates from a select group of suppliers. The case suggested that the purchase of these items were several times higher than the market value and made on bogus or highly inflated rates to simply defraud PTCL. The suppliers were either their close relatives or were illegal associates of PTCL officials.

The case stated that false payments were made to contractors from under the head of road reinstatement, while other financial heads like building modification, dismantling and extra establishment were misused to siphon off government funds.

A deputy chief engineer and the general manager of the BT project deliberately allocated funds for utilization under different heads like purchase of vehicles and local purchases to provide opportunities to their associates to misappropriate them.

CORRUPTION CASE: The same court in another case granted a judicial remand of 15 days to three officials of Pakistan Railways.