PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday expressed dissatisfaction with an official briefing on the alleged irregularities in the official account for security and deposit funds and ordered the finance department and the accountant general`s office to conduct an internal inquiry into the matter within three days.

The PAC took notice of the issue after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) launched an inquiry into the alleged irregularities of Rs36 billion in account No G-10113for earnest money, security and deposit funds of local government, communication and works, irrigation and public health accounts, prompting the PAC to take notice of the issue.

The alleged financial irregularities came under discussion during a special PAC meeting, which was held here with Babar Saleem Swati in the chair.

The participants included representatives of the finance, communication and works departments, accountant general`s office, auditor general of Pakistan, lawmakers from both treasury and opposition benches, and adviser to the chief minister on finance Muzammil Aslam.

`NAB is carrying out an investigation but it always ends up in plea bargains in such cases, recovering a small amount of the actual amount, Mr Swati said.

He raised questions about the rest of the amount, sayingfailure to recover it is a loss to the exchequer.

Officials of the finance department said that the funds were not consolidated and were from public accounts-an amount paid in terms of security and deposits.

They said such cheques were sent to the district account office and a monthly report was filed, with the accountant general`s office maintaining the account and submitting a report to the finance department. The officials said a factfinding report would be produced within 10 days.

Aide to the CM Muzammil Aslam questioned the possibility of Rs36 billion funds embezzlement in Kohistan region, saying only Rs1.468 billion has been issued since 2019. He said that the total ADP for the entire province remained Rs594 billion between 2019 and 2025.

`The adviser wants to give animpression that there`s no possibility of embezzlement of such a huge amount,` member of the opposition PPP Ahmad Kareem Kundi said.

He demanded the adviser`s resignation on `moral grounds.

Mr Kundi said that responsibility should be fixed for the `scam` no matter whosoever was involved.

`I am not satisfied with the briefings by departments. We will have to find out how the amount was withdrawn. The PAC will dig it out,` he said.

Mr Swati said that the issue was about the withdrawal of the amount from the security and deposit account.

`This cannot happen without your [the finance department and accounting general office`s] involvement,` he said.

The auditor general office`s representatives said that similar cases were reported in Punjab as well.They said that a special audit was carried out of the security account for the province`s 18 districts in 2021-2022, leading to the detection of Rs6 billion discrepancies. The officials said that due to some weaknesses, some people exploited the system.

They said the account in which the alleged irregularities were reported was a pool (collective account) of the public health engineering, irrigation, communication and works and local government departments for submitting securities for work.

The chair later ordered both the finance department and the accountant general`s office to immediately suspend all those allegedly involved in the scam.

`These departments consider themselves above the law.

People must know how much [of the taxpayers`] money have these departments embezzled, he said.