Senior PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal arrested
Senior PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Monday from the anti-corruption watchdog’s Rawalpindi chapter’s office where he had appeared to record his statement in the case regarding alleged corruption in Narowal Sports City (NSC) Project.
According to a statement, NAB also called in a team of doctors for the PML-N MNA’s medical assessment. Iqbal will be produced before an accountability court today Tuesday, where NAB will ask for his physical remand.
Iqbal is accused of using funds of the federal government and the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) for a sports city being established in Narowal a multi-billion project.
The PML-N leader had said he had submitted documents related to his income and expenditures to Rawalpindi NAB. The opposition leader had already replied to a questionnaire given to him by the bureau in connection with the same case.
He claimed that he had nothing to do with the case as the project had been launched in 2009 during the PPP government when he was not a federal minister.
He said that before Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) came to power, the project of NSC was 90 per cent complete, but the present government had turned it into ruins.
“In fact NAB should take those people to task who are responsible for the destruction of a national asset [NSC],” he added.
The PML-N leader said that when he became a federal minister, the NSC project was in the doldrums and like many other stalled projects, the PML-N government revived it and took it to near completion.
Born in 1958, Ahsan Iqbal is a PML-N stalwart who serves as the party’s secretary general and previously held the post of Minister of Interior and Minister for Planning and Development, under the premiership of Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.
Iqbal has been associated with prestigious educational institutions such as Government College Lahore, University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore), University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University and Harvard University. He has been elected as an MNA five times — in 1993, 1997, 2008, 2013 and 2018.