JJVL's Chief, Sons Among Six Accused Persons Arrested By NAB After Denial Of Bail

The chief of Jamshoro Joint Venture Limited (JJVL), which used to be the country's top Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) producer, and his 2 sons besides 3 other accused were sent to jail on Saturday after Accountability Court Hyderabad rejected their bail

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Nov, 2023) The chief of Jamshoro Joint Venture Limited (JJVL), which used to be the country's top Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) producer, and his 2 sons besides 3 other accused were sent to jail on Saturday after Accountability Court Hyderabad rejected their bail.

According to detail, Iqbal Z Ahmed, his sons Faseehuddin Ahmed and Raziuddin Ahmed, Qazi Humayun, Asim Iftikhar and Salamat Ali were arrested outside the court's premises and were later shifted to Nara Jail.

The accused are charged with causing Rs29 billion loss to the exchequer in the gas and LPG contracts in addition to laundering money.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) began the investigation as early as in 2013.

The NAB earlier on September 4, 2019, had arrested Iqbal and Salamat in Lahore.

All the accused later obtained bail from the Sindh High Court.

During the hearing, advocate Farooq H Naek, who represented the accused, apprised the court that his clients had withdrawn the bail secured from the SHC.

Naek pleaded the Accountability Court to grant them bail keeping in view the same grounds as per which the SHC had granted them bail.

However, the court turned down his plea and told the lawyer that the court could only grant bail once they were arrested.

The NAB had filed the reference against Ahmed, his sons and other accused persons in Accountability Court Hyderabad in 2020.

The JJVL's LPG extraction plant was commissioned in Jamshoro district in March 2005 with the capacity of 200 million standard cubic feet per day (MSCFD) while the capacity was enhanced to 345 MSCFD by October, 2014.

The plant's operation ground to a halt in June, 2020, after the LPG scam and money laundering cases surfaced.

In a letter to former Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in April, 2022, LPG Industries Association Chairman Irfan Khokhar had urged the PM to allow resumption of the gas supply to JJVL.

He maintained that JJVL could contribute between 10,000 to 12,000 tons of LPG per month and that the plant's closure from June 21, 2020, to March 31, 2022, had already caused around Rs50 billion loss to the national exchequer.