Peshawar court grants NAB seven-day remand of Kohistan scandal accused

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau has arrested another accused in the Upper Kohistan corruption case and produced him before an accountability court in Peshawar, which granted a seven-day physical remand.

Accountability Judge Hamid Mughal heard the application seeking the remand and handed Muhammad Ayaz over to NAB custody, the Minute Mirror reported, adding that NAB Special Prosecutor Habibullah Baig and the investigation officer were present in court.

The Associated Press of Pakistan reported that NAB had sought 14 days of physical remand and was granted seven. According to the state news agency, the NAB prosecutor told the court that Rs111.1 million embezzled in the Kohistan case had been recovered from Ayaz's bank account.

The Minute Mirror's account places the alleged loss far higher, at a different point in the case. It reported that Ayaz is the brother of Riyaz, a former cashier at a bank branch in Dasu, who is accused of embezzling more than Rs11 billion from the national treasury. The two reports do not reconcile these figures.

According to the Minute Mirror, Ayaz allegedly went into hiding after being named in what the outlet called the Mansehra-Kohistan scandal. NAB sources quoted by the outlet allege that he held assets belonging to his brother in his own name, and that investigators sought remand to question him about the ownership and transfer of those assets.

The court approved the seven-day remand after considering the prosecution's request, the outlet reported. NAB is expected to question Ayaz during the remand period about the alleged financial irregularities and about assets said to be linked to the former bank cashier.

The case concerns alleged irregularities involving a substantial amount of public money in Upper Kohistan, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and is being pursued before the accountability court in Peshawar. Neither report gave the date of Ayaz's arrest or said how many people have been held in the case so far.

The allegations against Ayaz have not been established in court, and the investigation is continuing.