Grant of liquor licence: Usman Buzdar holds approver responsible

ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has squarely held the approver – the then Excise & Taxation (E&T) Director General Akram Ashraf Gondal – responsible for the issuance of liquor licence to a Lahore hotel.

In his reply submitted to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in response to its questionnaire, the chief minister took the stand that neither he nor the then Punjab chief secretary or his principal secretary have any role in the grant of the licence in any way.

The licence was issued on Jan 19, 2019. A news item appeared about it in May that year after which the excise secretary formed a committee that rescinded the licence. However, the licensee challenged it in the Lahore High Court and got it restored. The Punjab government has gone into intra-court appeal against this decision.

Last month, Gondal filed a plea with the NAB to become its approver/ prime witness against the chief minister. He told the NAB that he was repeatedly called by the principal secretary and conveyed the orders of the chief minister that the licence should be issued to the Lahore hotel. In his statement recorded with the NAB, he has claimed that he informed the chief minister’s office that grant of the liquor licence will be against the policy and rules as the no-objection certificates (NOCs) were not complete. Buzdar has turned the tables on him in his reply.

On Sept 3, director general of the Lahore chapter of the NAB Shahzad Saleem said the chief minister has not yet submitted his reply in different investigations against him despite two notices to him. It was after that Buzdar filed his rejoinder.

Official documents show that at not a single paper, relating to the issuance of the licence, do signatures of the chief minister appear although Gondal sent summaries/ notes to his office for approval/ information. The chief and principal secretaries expressed displeasure and told the excise chief not to send such papers to them as it was not required under the rules. They returned both the summaries with the direction “to deal with the matter of issuance of licence at an appropriate forum in accordance with the law/policy in vogue.”

Responding to one summary, the principal secretary wrote: “It is observed that the administrative department had earlier initiated a summary for chief minister on the same subject. It is highly regretted that despite clear directions conveyed by the chief secretary on the [previous] summary the department has again submitted the instant note on the same issue. This note is not only uncalled for but is also not required under rules. The administrative department must avoid submission of cases to higher offices unnecessarily. The note is returned accordingly.”

In his reply, Buzdar argued that the power to issue such licence rests with the excise director general under the law and the chief minister has nothing to do with it. In the past, he said, eleven licences were issued – two of them by the excise chief and two by the governor (in 2001-02).

There has been no mention of an unexplained character either in the official documents and summaries or the chief minister’s reply. One Gur Bachan Singh, who is not a director/ official of the Unicorn Prestige Hotel that was given the licence, was also one of the two applicants. All the directors of the concern belong to one family, known as Pir Boghey Shah of Mandi Bahauddin, which also has the contracts of parking lots of different airports of Pakistan.

Gondal is likely to be covered by Section 25 of the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, which says at any stage of inquiry, investigation or trial, the NAB chairman may, with a view to obtaining the evidence of any person supposed to have been directly or indirectly concerned in or privy to any offence, tender a full or conditional pardon to such a person on condition of his making a full and true disclosure of the whole of the circumstances within his knowledge relating to the offence including the names of the persons involved whether as principals or abettors or otherwise. Every person accepting such tender of pardon shall be examined by a magistrate and shall also be examined as a witness in the subsequent trial. The person to whom pardon has been granted shall not in the case of a full pardon be tried for the offence in respect of which the pardon was granted; and in the case of conditional pardon be awarded a punishment or penalty higher or other than that specified in the grant of pardon notwithstanding the punishment or penalty authorised by law.

Where the NAB chairman certifies that in his opinion, any person who has accepted such tender has, either by willfully concealing anything essential or by giving false evidence through willful or reckless misstatement, not complied with the condition on which the tender of pardon was made, such a person may be tried for the offence in respect of which the pardon was so tendered, or for any other offence of which he appears to have been guilty in connection with the matter including the offence of giving false evidence, which he knows or ought to know is false. Any statement made before a magistrate by a person who has accepted a tender of pardon may be given in evidence against him at the trial.