Islamabad : The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested two officials of the Foreign ministry allegedly involved in documents verification/ attestation process scam. The Foreign ministry officials who have been arrested in connection with corruption of billions of rupee through the process of attestation of the documents included an assistant director and an in charge of postal section of the concerned department of the Foreign ministry.
With arrest of two officials of the Foreign ministry, still four other officials part of the racket involved in the corruption scam are on the run. FIA has already nabbed 16 individuals who allegedly have involvement in the scandal. Those arrested earlier included employees of courier companies such as ECS, owners of FF Plaza in Aabpara and some employees of the consultancy firms. The accused used to extort money from the applicants for speeding up verification of their documents.
FIA said the accused used fake stamps, stickers and other documents to get attested the documents of the applicants who approached them for it. The accused developed a racket comprising at least half a dozen officials of the Foreign ministry.
FIA initial reports said its reliable sources had confirmed wrongdoings in the process of attestation of the documents and on the basis of their information, its team raided and arrested 16 employees of various courier services.
FIA had presented 16 accused already in its custody and got their physical remand to probe the case. It may produced two arrested officials of the Foreign ministry before the magistrate for physical remand tomorrow.
The issue of corruption in the department of attestation of documents was already in the notice of top officials of the Foreign ministry and a fact-finding one-man inquiry committee had investigated the matter , but instead taking action to stop corruption and get registered cases against those responsible in and outside the ministry , Foreign ministry’s top officials protected the crime.
This ugly practices could have continued had it not reported by the press . Even after reporting of the massive corruption in Foreign ministry’s documents attestation department, its top authorities kept on hide the matter.
The spokesman of the Foreign Office is among those who falsefully hushed up corruption in the Foreign ministry’s public dealing office. In the last press briefing , the spokesman clearly denied any wrongdoing in the process of attestation of the documents and called the media report to this effect non verified and baseless.
Recently , retied Foreign secretary , Amina Baloch. Kept on sitting on the inquiry committee’s finding which undoubtedly confirmed huge corruption in paper verification of the Foreign ministry and suggested a way forward to put an end to the culture of corruption in paper verification department of the Foreign ministry.
FIA must question Amina Baloch for not taking action against those involved in corruption in a key department of her ministry and expose the whole network involved in the corruption of billions of rupee.
